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Beta Navigation - experiences?

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David.85D

Active Member
Oct 29, 2016
1,726
1,502
USA
Was driving a friends Tesla in Denver today. His car has the beta Nav update. It was driving my crazy. Several times the voice would say turn right (or east, etc) when the display was clearly showing a left turn (or west, etc). Got out of the car thinking I was loosing it.

Back when my wife was the navigator, she was notorious for doing the “you should have turned back there” manuveur on me.

Now the new Nav is doing The same! Having crossed 17th street, approaching 18th street, and the Nav voice piped up “turn right on 17th Street”. Argh!!!

Hope it’s not like this on the East Coast. I’ll have to use my phone to navigate...
 
I tried a short (~7 mile trip today) and found I really liked the new display. Covered more of screen, easier to read, zooming was useful and I liked the voice better.

However, the voice prompts often were to close to the turns. Had I been relying on the prompts I would have missed at least one turn.
 
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The bad:

Surprisingly bad last mile management to SCs. Zoomed view disappears, and the position icon is on top of the SC icon, requiring some futzing. Re-navigating to the SC by tapping the once-visible icon and then the Navigate button brings the zoomed view back. Meh.

The good:

Better voice features - not quite as repetitive, and the voice does not overlay or reduce the volume of existing audio.

The not worse:

A 300-mile round trip today included some reasonably accurate travel estimates, but that is how it should be since traffic was not awful.

The possibly better:

Initial indications that energy usage is more accurate - no abrupt changes after getting underway/first 30 miles for example. Does not appear to account for range mode up front, so one can arrive with 3% more than expected/estimated.
 
However, the voice prompts often were to close to the turns.
Agreed, for some reason it seems like I am now very likely to drive past my turns. It could just be that it's different and I have not adjusted yet, because the directions aren't really wrong. Maybe I just miss the triangle-and-dot nearness indicator that the old navigation had.

I have not yet noticed that the voice is still mixing up right and left. The old nav would mess that up, so I could just have learned to ignore it.

I also would like the map to not center on my current location. What's behind me is really virtually useless for navigation. Center my location so that 3/4+ of the map lies in the direction I'm headed and/or contains my path.

Overall, though, really happy with it. I like the new cross street popups and the new voice is a big improvement.
 
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I find if you make it re-route more than once, the display on the instrument cluster and the larger display begin to diverge and one often thinks you are going almost in reverse from where you are currently. Kind of bizarre as the voice did not match the display at all.

If I do not miss a turn all is well, but on the freeway, if I chose a route different from NAV... it gets interesting especially if you make it reroute a bunch.

I also get the 'turn left on X street about 20 feet AFTER I pass the street - again if it is re-routing.
 
For me, the new voice appears to be much more muffled than the old voice and it's hard to hear without turning up the volume. The old voice was crisp, clear and easy to hear. The new voice appears to be much more bassy, boomy and less clear, at least to my old hard of hearing ears. My wife has commented on the same thing....

I've "Noted" it to Tesla...
 
I just completed about 250 miles today. The biggest gripe I have is the map zooming for the center display when using the north-at-top mode. It's zoomed much too far out. At one point I had several turns at the end of my route, but the default zoom level resulted in the entire path being very short with no detail. So, there is the destination pin, the car arrow a quarter inch away, and a little blue from the path underneath and between them.
I am getting used to it and not missing turns as much, so I really do like it.
 
The new female voice is less robotic than the original one, almost to the point of being sultry. Her pronunciation of street names is much better, at least here in Vermont.

The satellite maps appear to have more visual punch. The colors look a bit more saturated.

Of particular note is the new auto magnification feature on the MCU. As near as I can tell, the map changes magnification based on changes in speed or the speed limit, such as when approaching an exit ramp. It is active all the time, not just when navigating. The dashboard Nav display has done something similar to this all along, increasing its magnification and changing to 3-D when approaching a turn in the route.
 
For me, the new voice appears to be much more muffled than the old voice and it's hard to hear without turning up the volume. The old voice was crisp, clear and easy to hear. The new voice appears to be much more bassy, boomy and less clear, at least to my old hard of hearing ears. My wife has commented on the same thing....

I've "Noted" it to Tesla...

i agree the new voice is harder to hear. it is a pleasant voice, but even with the navigation volume set to 11, i could not hear it over a podcast i was listening to. It also seems as if it does not mute the audio as the old system did (or is that my imagination?).

I also experienced one or two times when I thought the voice announcement came too late for a turn. Fortunately I was following the route on the big map, as i always have, so i did not miss the turns.

I do miss the old version in one way -- I preferred the view that showed the exits and highway signs, rather than the vertical map-like view that the new one uses (in the instrument cluster).
 
And by the way, I was astounded that I even got the new navigation, because I park so far from the router in my condo (more than 100 feet, I think) that my WiFi signal is very weak in my parking spot. So, I had never bothered to link it to my WiFi. After I got the software (2018.14.2) a week ago, I linked the car to my WiFi, but I never saw the WiFi image appear on the screen, so I assumed that I would not get the maps.
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Today I had a 90-minute drive into and out of Boston, and when I got into my car again after i was through at my destination, there was the message on the screen about the new update! So, it took a week, and I cannot even say for certain that i got the maps through WiFi, but I did get them.
 
I finally got the update on my personal car and think the lag in announcing exits is much better/fixed. Could be the difference in area, but the places I’ve tried it in the last week have given me appropriate notice of exits, and haven’t had it announce an exit I have already passed. Performance is better. Speed measured on the browser is way up, too.

Looking like we’re on the positive slope now...
 
The voice seems to get right and left correct about half the time, which is amusing to be since I am left-right confused as well. I don't know if she and I working together are better or worse off...

I DO know compass directions, and she is often wrong on those, too.

I am just getting in the habit of looking at the IC display to see which way to turn when she says anything.
 
One other very nice Improvement in the new navigation. In the old system, the voice would not pronounce acronyms for state names when they appeared on highway signs. For example, the acronym RI for Rhode Island would be pronounced something like "ree". In the new system, the state names are pronounced in full, which is a very nice Improvement.
 
One other very nice Improvement in the new navigation. In the old system, the voice would not pronounce acronyms for state names when they appeared on highway signs. For example, the acronym RI for Rhode Island would be pronounced something like "ree". In the new system, the state names are pronounced in full, which is a very nice Improvement.


You think that’s bad.... here to tell you about CA-92 EB it used to say “CA 92 exabytes”
 
One other very nice Improvement in the new navigation. In the old system, the voice would not pronounce acronyms for state names when they appeared on highway signs. For example, the acronym RI for Rhode Island would be pronounced something like "ree". In the new system, the state names are pronounced in full, which is a very nice Improvement.

Oops, I may have spoken too soon. Today the system spoke the names of the letters for "NH" on a highway sign rather than saying "New Hampshire." I dislike inconsistencies! Then again, at least it did not try to pronounce the abbreviation as if it were an acronym.