Zwift Gets Its Biggest Map Expansion In Years And An AI Injection

The Brompton World Championship is coming to Zwift.

Zwift

Zwift has announced its latest seasonal update, and among a boatload of changes and additions are a massive expansion of its New York game world and an injection of the flavour of the month, AI.

Before you groan at the mere mention of artificial intelligence, Zwift’s application of it sounds like a sensible feature that could have been implemented (perhaps in more basic form) before AI took over the tech landscape.

Zwift: New And Upcoming Features

From November, Zwift will offer Personalized Recommendations, based on your recent activity and your workout patterns. The update will introduce a Tune button, which will then show you recommended “workouts, routes, events and Robo Pacer rides.”

The idea is to help stop you scrolling through lists of workouts, Netflix style. Or, what I often tend to do: continually pick the same workout.

Personalised recommendations pair with weekly goals that will be steered by AI. This one is a little simpler, as it’s just the goal you set in distance or calories burnt, for example, will alter as you make progress. It’s optional, a slider in the app switching between concrete and auto-adjusting goals.

This slots into a wider moves Zwift has made recently to make the platform more of an all-round fitness tool, so you don’t have to perform an FTP test for concrete proof you are improving.

To that end, from September Zwift can also pull in data from Garmin, Wahoo, Strava or Hammerhead to factor in workouts performed off the platform. This is fairly essential in order to make Personalised Recommendations useful. Otherwise Zwift might end up suggesting a hard workout the day after you’ve done a 200km hard ride.

The part I enjoy most about Zwift’s updates, though, is the course upgrades. I’m a tourist, not much of a racer.

Zwift’s New York environment is getting a huge level-up too, in what is being called “Zwift’s largest map expansion in years.:

Rather than adding piecemeal a road here and there to a previously blocked-in chunk of map, Zwift is adding a new zone. You’ll take the subway out to Prospect Park, which is south of Manhattan for those who have never visited the city proper.

The expansion brings 20 routes, four of which are for runners, and includes 31km of roads. It will unlock on October 27.

These are just what I think are the most impactful of changes coming up in Zwift. Big users of the service should check out the platform’s own blog post on the coming updates, which includes info on the Brompton World Championship, in which — you guessed it — you’ll ride a Brompton bike.