Zwift Lag, Riderless Bikes

Elfed

I'm having intermittent problems with Zwift where I suffer with lag, riderless bikes around me, the mobile link failing to connect.

All this seems to be around 5pm when I ride after work, not during the day.

All my equipment is ok, got a Wahoo Kickr 1, laptop and around 62mbps broadband speed.

I'm pretty sure my setup is ok as it happened tonight after twenty minutes of problem free riding, then everything started to get laggy, riders disappearing etc.

Has anybody else experienced this and is is the Zwift servers not being able to cope with demand?

molteni_man

Hi Elfed,
I have used Zwift a fair bit this winter without too many problems. Someone posted recently on another thread that this type of problem was due to internet problems rather than Zwift. A friend described having big problems connecting at the weekend so wonder if it is more general though?

Elfed

Molteni Man wrote:

Hi Elfed,
I have used Zwift a fair bit this winter without too many problems. Someone posted recently on another thread that this type of problem was due to internet problems rather than Zwift. A friend described having big problems connecting at the weekend so wonder if it is more general though?

p


I was asked to do a speedtest to an LA server by Zwift support and although the speed was fine, the ping was around 150 which is high. To a server in the UK the ping is under 30.
My laptop is connected by ethernet cable.

It happened tonight as a very large group ride went past me, then it never recovered.

molteni_man

I switched to Talk Talk back in November to save a lot of money over BT. The service is not great frankly but still seems to have enough to get me connected in my garage. It dropped out the other night but recovered shortly afterwards and I remained in the race and other riders reappeared.

Elfed

Molteni Man wrote:

I switched to Talk Talk back in November to save a lot of money over BT. The service is not great frankly but still seems to have enough to get me connected in my garage. It dropped out the other night but recovered shortly afterwards and I remained in the race and other riders reappeared.

The only different thing I've got is a new router, a BT Smart Hub which is supposed to be an improvement on the 5.
I'll look into signal drop on the Smart Hub.

Thanks

MiddleRinger

This is caused by one of two issues. The first being your graphics card not keeping up, that can cause lagging and a drop in frame rate, plus the riderless bikes as it reduces the amount of detail in order to cope. What quality settings are you running? Zwift can be quite GPU heavy at times, especially if you're part of a massive group of riders!

Try putting one of your log files into: https://zwiftalizer.com

The second is an internet issue, either a slowing of your provider's connection speed (possibly at peak usage times) or a poor connection over WiFi, although you've said you are wired in so it's not that.

Elfed

MiddleRinger wrote:

This is caused by one of two issues. The first being your graphics card not keeping up, that can cause lagging and a drop in frame rate, plus the riderless bikes as it reduces the amount of detail in order to cope. What quality settings are you running? Zwift can be quite GPU heavy at times, especially if you're part of a massive group of riders!

Try putting one of your log files into: https://zwiftalizer.com

The second is an internet issue, either a slowing of your provider's connection speed (possibly at peak usage times) or a poor connection over WiFi, although you've said you are wired in so it's not that.

I was riding alone, everything was fine then this large group of maybe twenty or thirty riders went past and everything went a bit haywire.
It never recovered after that and I had to end the ride.

My laptop isn't the latest and has an integrated graphics card. I'm running it through an external monitor with it's screen blank, so.i think that eases up on the CPU.

I've got Zwift running on 1080p on it's dashboard setting, seems to work fine most of the time.

I'm off this week, so I'm going to ride this morning to see if it's different, as I suspect it's a peak UK/Europe problem.

Thanks

MiddleRinger

Elfed wrote:

My laptop isn't the latest and has an integrated graphics card. I'm running it through an external monitor with it's screen blank, so.i think that eases up on the CPU.

I recon that's your issue right there. An integrated graphic card will never be as good. On my old very basic laptop, any time there was more than 20 riders on the screen the frame rate would drop into single digits and details would start to get lost. Running it through an external monitor won't make much difference. Get on Zwiftalizer (see my previous post) and see how your system benchmarks against other systems.

Elfed

MiddleRinger wrote:

Elfed wrote:

My laptop isn't the latest and has an integrated graphics card. I'm running it through an external monitor with it's screen blank, so.i think that eases up on the CPU.

I recon that's your issue right there. An integrated graphic card will never be as good. On my old very basic laptop, any time there was more than 20 riders on the screen the frame rate would drop into single digits and details would start to get lost. Running it through an external monitor won't make much difference. Get on Zwiftalizer (see my previous post) and see how your system benchmarks against other systems.

Hi, I've been on Zwiftalyser and it's terrible news, it's a Poor in pinkish red.
I'm also getting a few ant+ dropouts even though I'm running it on an extension cable. I've plugged the dongle into the laptop directly now see if that works.

I don't really need a laptop for anything, so I'm hesitant about buying a new one, I'm considering Apple TV as an alternative.

Elfed

So, did a ride this morning and everything was fine.

I plugged the ant+ dongle directly into the laptop, swapped the router back to the home hub 5 and also switched off the Bluetooth on my phone.
There wasn't many UK riders on, mainly from Japan and Brazil, not sure if that makes a difference.

On looking at Zwiftalyser after the ride I noticed that ant+ activity was much better with only five repairings compared to about twelve and no network errors or reconnects.
Interestingly, on the other logs the network line was midway up and in the red, so maybe it was a router problem.

Next step is maybe a powered USB hub to get those ant+ dropouts down to nothing.