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I wonder if the root cause of Tesla not addressing these issues isn't hardware related. The real time system operating the actual driving related aspects of the car (steering, battery charge/discharge, regenerative braking, motor control, cooling, etc.) obviously works very well, and hasn't needed an upgrade to the hardware since the cars release back in 2012. The hardware chosen must have been been locked in earlier, say 2011.
The media stuff is almost certainly running on a different processor, or processors. There have been tremendous leaps in both storage and processor speed since 2011. And any code handling any given users USB stick that is inserted is faced with the task of figuring out what is in those 6,100 (!) or more files. Not only what is in them, but when to try indexing them for search, and what to do if someone tries searching before the indexing gets done, etc. It could be that the current hardware simply isn't up to the task. Map rendering was also commented on earlier in the thread.
Given the massive trend in increasing processing power and storage, I'm wondering if Tesla foresaw that this might become an issue at some point. Maybe they know that their current hardware can't do everything they would like to have it do, so have made some minor improvements, but given up on a radical software improvement solution.
The silver lining might be that if they knew this would happen, they would have designed the hardware to allow for the most minimally invasive hardware upgrade path. So here we are 5 years after the original design was done. Maybe now that Tesla can buy a graphics engine that is 20x more powerful than the original one, with 10x as much storage, for 20% of the original cost, they might be able to design a low cost drop in solution that will make the leap from where things stand now to something really snappy? This could be why they are so far behind in the user interface area. Maybe they are focusing on the upgrade path I mentioned.
When the Model 3 comes out, the processing power of the onboard systems will have many times the capabilities of the 2013 Model S's. If you can avoid having the older flagship car (Model S) be eclipsed by the newer 1/2 price entry level car by simply swapping out the UI hardware for a reasonable cost, say $1,000, why not do it? Especially if the current design allows for that. Given the amount of time this gets discussed here, it seems like a reasonably priced upgrade that solves the problems would be gobbled up like there is no tomorrow...
RT
Same boat here. I am constantly checking to make sure my car is still connected to my wifi too.
BertL
Active Member
May work for those with a small number of tracks, or only with certain music types. It's not a good solution if you have lots of compilations, Broadway, or albums with multiple artists where the artist tag by MP3 definition lists all (or most) of the artists on a particular track. Tesla's Artist menu (used to be "tab") is dumb in the sense it alpha sorts that list by whatever is listed in that string of text...
An example. Let's say you have an album where most of the tracks are James Taylor alone, but on one is James and someone else... First, in the former and present menu structure, you'll see two lines in the Artist Menu for that one album -- one for "James Taylor", and another for "James Taylor, Somebody Else", or "James Taylor & Somebody Else", or some other permutation. 
It becomes more crazy if that second artist is listed first in the tag because they have the lead, as it sorts out of sequence from the rest with Tesla's implementation. You can imagine what happens with say a Broadway Album where one track has many artists, and who is first on each varies widely song to song, or on compilation albums where one artist or group does say duets with many others varying from track-to-track.
As I mentioned earlier in my all too long post, the simpler solution while it eliminates detail, has always been for Tesla to just use the "Album Artist" tag on the Media Player Album Menu, where in my former example, all tracks would have been tagged "James Taylor" and then there would be just one entry for the Album. OTOH, if Tesla cared about making USB operate like other best-of-breed media players, they'd add logic to either use the compilation tag as a trigger for what to do, or like say ITunes does, parse the Artist tag into its individual Artists even when there are multiples on a single track. It's complicated, but Tesla's implementation to me demonstrates the designers and engineers coding/testing are only using simple examples with a small volume -- not likely what represents Tesla Owners that also are trying to bring a substantial music library into their Tesla as they have probably done on former luxury vehicles they have owned. Sorry. It becomes more crazy if that second artist is listed first in the tag because they have the lead, as it sorts out of sequence from the rest with Tesla's implementation. You can imagine what happens with say a Broadway Album where one track has many artists, and who is first on each varies widely song to song, or on compilation albums where one artist or group does say duets with many others varying from track-to-track.
...oh, and I should add, the workaround I've been using and continue to use with 8.0 that allows me to use the Artist Menu, is TeslaTunes (available on Mac only). It literally reads my source tracks, takes the Album Artist tag and puts that data into the (track) Artist tag when it builds a copy of the track onto my USB stick, working around Tesla's deficiency. That helps, but honestly, with lots of tracks, albums, or artists, we need the alpha-shortcut back as scrolling is just unreasonable if your trying to keep your eyes on the road.
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Todd Burch
14-Year Member
I share the disappointments about the media player. I like the new UI, but I don't think a new look was the primary driver for the new UI. Recent releases had become really sluggish from a UI perspective lately--frustratingly so.
The performance of the UI in 8.0 is vastly improved, so I suspect that a good amount of time was spent optimizing things. It shows.
While this release is a bit disappointing overall as far as new functionality is concerned given that it's been over half a year coming, I'm hoping that it sets the stage now for more substantive releases to come. I have no doubt that the real meat of this release was under the hood. Radar, audio processing, and performance. (Skipping on Slacker/USB seems to be gone, so that's good).
Seems the car taking exits, live Supercharger info, and other functionality improvements should be coming soon. Hopefully now that the software team has cleaned up some of their mess, substantive improvements can come quickly.
The performance of the UI in 8.0 is vastly improved, so I suspect that a good amount of time was spent optimizing things. It shows.
While this release is a bit disappointing overall as far as new functionality is concerned given that it's been over half a year coming, I'm hoping that it sets the stage now for more substantive releases to come. I have no doubt that the real meat of this release was under the hood. Radar, audio processing, and performance. (Skipping on Slacker/USB seems to be gone, so that's good).
Seems the car taking exits, live Supercharger info, and other functionality improvements should be coming soon. Hopefully now that the software team has cleaned up some of their mess, substantive improvements can come quickly.
Todd Burch
14-Year Member
I'll add that I like how the new map has more real estate.
However:
I used to quickly tap the camera icon when coming up on a merge on the highway or other instances where I wanted improved views of my blind spots. Can't do that quickly now that the map eats the title bar.
I'm open to adapting, however I'd like those icons to animate in more quickly when I tap the map so I can quickly get the rear camera up.
Also, I usually had camera on top and map on bottom prior to 8.0. That's more of a pain to set up with the camera and map both preferring the top in 8.0
However:
I used to quickly tap the camera icon when coming up on a merge on the highway or other instances where I wanted improved views of my blind spots. Can't do that quickly now that the map eats the title bar.
I'm open to adapting, however I'd like those icons to animate in more quickly when I tap the map so I can quickly get the rear camera up.
Also, I usually had camera on top and map on bottom prior to 8.0. That's more of a pain to set up with the camera and map both preferring the top in 8.0
n2mb_racing
Active Member
Updating now! I kept my car Tethered to my phone while it was parked and I was out running. I don't have Wi-Fi in my garage so I can't get connected. It seems to have downloaded the update over my phone.
Lex
Member
I'm pretty sure they both know exactly our concerns, and have already either prioritized or rejected them. Some perhaps rejected repeatedly. In this line of reasoning the USB situation seems to be an imposed set of limits. Or with any line of reasoning really -- it seems to be a clear statement, doesn't it ? Not even searching ???
Mounting a drive and indexing it is something for the system to deal with and maybe they just decided to cap it. I can deal with this and get back to asking more simple questions like...
Why can't I defrost the rear window before I get to the car ? Brr.. winter's coming.
Mounting a drive and indexing it is something for the system to deal with and maybe they just decided to cap it. I can deal with this and get back to asking more simple questions like...
Why can't I defrost the rear window before I get to the car ? Brr.. winter's coming.
Lex
Member
Searched on Audio but didn't see any comments about this directly..
I mostly use Slacker and have noticed a significant improvement in audio quality. I noticed improvement with the previous dot update in the 7.x release, but this is more. Lots more clarity across the range at pretty much all volumes and all genres I listen to (Rock, Jazz, Classical) I didn't want to get out of the car tonight..
I mostly use Slacker and have noticed a significant improvement in audio quality. I noticed improvement with the previous dot update in the 7.x release, but this is more. Lots more clarity across the range at pretty much all volumes and all genres I listen to (Rock, Jazz, Classical) I didn't want to get out of the car tonight..
Xenoilphobe
Well-Known Member
Love it!!!!!! My classic P85+ feels new again!!!!
Did anybody tune into radio channel 530AM ?
I installed the new 8.0 ver at work today and when i got into my car this evening the audio got defaulted to channel 530 AM which i never listen to. Very interesting to hear your driving speed is synchronized over this channel and the drive train noise is amplified !!!!!!!!!!!
It is 100% synchronized to the accelerator pedal
I installed the new 8.0 ver at work today and when i got into my car this evening the audio got defaulted to channel 530 AM which i never listen to. Very interesting to hear your driving speed is synchronized over this channel and the drive train noise is amplified !!!!!!!!!!!
It is 100% synchronized to the accelerator pedal
MikeKFE
2023 MXP | 2023 MSLR
I decided to plug in the charger after the install started. She didn't seem to care much for that either.
My 8.0 review:
Not really a major UI overhaul, just some updated icons and text, who cares. Media player looks different, does mostly the same stuff, doesn't affect how I use it really, who cares. Parking chimes still useless, bing, bing, bing. Cold weather stuff, not cold yet but the heated steering wheel control still doesn't remember settings and is STILL buried inside the menus. It would be inaccurate to say they really thought through the human interaction issues vs just refreshing some skins.
New nav: slightly more responsive, still not even close to iPhone levels. It would freeze for many seconds at a time before, so the bar is low.
Regen: See below. Looks like an improvement in a certain range, but looks like actually less regen under ~10mph??? Will have to log more data to be sure. Regardless, nothing that warrants a warning in the dash. 20% better regen at best.
AP: not enough time to form an opinion.
Bugs: I'm sure there are some, not enough time to hit them all yet.
Not really a major UI overhaul, just some updated icons and text, who cares. Media player looks different, does mostly the same stuff, doesn't affect how I use it really, who cares. Parking chimes still useless, bing, bing, bing. Cold weather stuff, not cold yet but the heated steering wheel control still doesn't remember settings and is STILL buried inside the menus. It would be inaccurate to say they really thought through the human interaction issues vs just refreshing some skins.
New nav: slightly more responsive, still not even close to iPhone levels. It would freeze for many seconds at a time before, so the bar is low.
Regen: See below. Looks like an improvement in a certain range, but looks like actually less regen under ~10mph??? Will have to log more data to be sure. Regardless, nothing that warrants a warning in the dash. 20% better regen at best.
AP: not enough time to form an opinion.
Bugs: I'm sure there are some, not enough time to hit them all yet.
BertL
Active Member
Charging and even opening the charge door or plugging in a cable to the charge port are all controlled by onboard computers. No matter how impatient we may be, it's always best to not even open a door once the owner has initiated and an update has begun, until the process is complete. No exceptions.