How does difficulty level work?

[Shon_T]

I have difficulty level set to default of 5. 

How does changing that setting have an impact on my experience?

Should I be raising or lowering it if I am climbing a mountain...or headed down a mountain?

[Snowpelt]

I wouldn't use it like adjusting gears on a bike but more of a balance point for your fitness level and the Challenge you want. At difficulty 1 you will move much faster with less pedaling, and at 10 the opposite. Depending on what I am doing I will adjust it, if for example I am trying to get a long ride done in a short time window I will drop it down to 1. Normally I leave it around 5.

[Shon_T]

I wouldn't use it like adjusting gears on a bike but more of a balance point for your fitness level and the Challenge you want.  At difficulty 1 you will move much faster with less pedaling, and at 10 the opposite. Depending on what I am doing I will adjust it, if for example I am trying to get a long ride done in a short time window I will drop it down to 1. Normally I leave it around 5.

Thanks for the response, That makes sense. 5 seems to work for me, and I think I get a fairly "real-world" type speed at that level. Of course....I'm screaming up hills much faster than I ever would in real life...but I'm often hitting long downhill portions much slower...

[emalafeew]

I could give you the formula, but basically each difficulty notch is 10% faster or slower away from the default of 5. So difficulty 1 is 40% faster, and difficulty 8 is 30% slower.

Note we automatically slow you up virtual hills and quicken you down hills, as if you were always shifting to maintain constant resistance, but it's not particularly realistic (especially downhill because we don't coast). It does however to subtly encourage riders to quicken their pedaling up hills and to take a break down hills to maintain constant velocity, and we always try to tie a sound component to our avatars to velocity so you can hear it too.

Btw in our next release we'll be storing your difficulty setting like other settings between runs, and are also making the 1-4 levels non linear so difficulty 1 is 100% faster, so that people with ellipticals can play easier.

[Shon_T]

I could give you the formula, but basically each difficulty notch is 10% faster or slower away from the default of 5.  So difficulty 1 is 40% faster, and difficulty 8 is 30% slower.

Note we automatically slow you up virtual hills and quicken you down hills, as if you were always shifting to maintain constant resistance, but it's not particularly realistic (especially downhill because we don't coast).  It does however to subtly encourage riders to quicken their pedaling up hills and to take a break down hills to maintain constant velocity, and we always try to tie a sound component to our avatars to velocity so you can hear it too.

Btw in our next release we'll be storing your difficulty setting like other settings between runs, and are also making the 1-4 levels non linear so difficulty 1 is 100% faster, so that people with ellipticals can play easier.

Thanks again for the clarification.