I know that the helicopters really help with funding the race, but no one wants to listen to them. It blew my mind to see Zwift bring helicopters into their biking simulator --- there are so many features that Zwift needs, and they added a distracting helicopter.
Fun fact: up until a couple of years ago, whenever you saw a helicopter shot on the Tour de France, a fake chopper noise soundtrack would play faintly in the background. The host broadcaster felt that it added to the ambiance, since the helicopters don’t carry microphones.
Fortunately that practice has been nixed for good. Now the helicopter shots are only mixed with the (real) sounds captured by the motorcycles.
