Video: How they made Alpe du Zwift

Ever wondered how Zwift creates its on-screen terrain? We hadn’t – then we watched this Zwiftcast video and found ourselves becoming more and more intrigued. Then, after watching the video for a little longer, we started to feel like we were watching live coverage of someone’s very slow, very painstaking job. We also felt a certain sense of awe at just how much work goes into this stuff.

Billed as a “peak” (no idea whether that’s a deliberate joke) behind the curtain at the tools and techniques used to create the Alpe du Zwift climb, the video gives a sense of the incredible attention to detail required to build the environments that Zwifters ride around.

The team spent months working on Alpe du Zwift, building everything you get to see. It’s not enough to build a fence, for example – they also have to add wood grain and paint it and add shadows and whatnot. And that’s just for a bit of fence. You pass more than the odd bit of fence while riding a 12km climb.

However, there is a limit to how detailed the environment can become. Compromises sometimes need to be made.

“We always want more grass. But things don’t run with too much grass.”