I've been in the FSD Beta program since summer of last year, and while I've seen updates with significant improvements, so far my limited experience with 11.4.2 has shown more improvements than I've seen in any prior release.
(As always, YMMV).
We've all developed a feel for what FSD Beta can and can't do. And yes, experiences vary wildly, from "It works well and I use it a lot" to "I've cancelled my FSD subscription". We all have a personal list of situations and edge cases where it doesn't work well, or at all. So when I received the update, I took the car on a route I do frequently: my house to the gym and back. Prior FSD versions have handled this route with varying degrees of success, but the past several versions have demonstrated consistent problems at specific places that 11.4.2 seems to have resolved.
Improvement #1: The car must make two right-hand turns at stop signs to exit the housing division I live in. Visibility to the left is marginal on both turns. Heavy bushes block your view to the left of the first turn, and an uphill crest restricts visibility to the left on the second turn. Previous FSD iterations handled these turns by:
-- Stop well back of stop sign, confusing following drivers
-- Inching forward
-- Inching forward
-- "FSD creeping forward" notice on dash
-- Inching forward (car behind me honks)
-- Sudden, lunging acceleration into the turn.
With 11.4.2, the car pulls confidently up to the stop sign, makes a single, short forward motion to check traffic to the left, and then pulls smoothly and confidently through the turn.
Improvement #2: Lane choices are much better. Going to the gym, the car turns left onto a 3-lane street. In 2.5 blocks it will need to turn left to get onto the highway. With earlier FSD versions, the car would turn into the far left lane, then almost immediately move to the middle or right lane (which lanes seems to depend on traffic). Since traffic tends to back up at the freeway entrance, this often left the car in the wrong lane to get onto the highway, and it would miss the entrance since it couldn't merge into the existing line of cars.
With 11.4.2, the car turns into the left lane and stays there. A similar "wrong lane" situation occurs when I'm returning from the gym, with the car existing the highway to the right and moving into the far left lane when a right turn is coming up in 2 blocks. This also seems to have been resolved.
My experience has been limited so far but it's looking very good. The progress of FSD reminds me of the progress made in speech recognition: I was writing speech recognition software for the Apple ][ computers in the early 80s (yes, I'm that old). At the time you had to train the system on individual words, many repetitions of each word were involved, and the possible vocabulary was very small (10-15 words). Over the years the training sessions became faster and the vocabulary size increased. Sometime in the 90s we hit the point where you could dictate (Dragon Dictate, anyone?) as long as you paused..slightly...between..each..word. And you still had to read a few paragraphs to the computer first.
Now, my iPhone recognizes continuous speech in real time, completely on the device, with no training necessary. This wasn't heralded as a giant breakthrough; speech recognition just got incrementally better over time. FSD seems to be heading along the same path, but MUCH faster. I dunno if Elon will ever achieve L3 or above with the current setup, but 11.4.2 makes me optimistic it will at the least be a very useful feature.
I'm certain there will be people whose experiences are nowhere near as positive as mine. What's your experience with 11.4.x been?
(As always, YMMV).
We've all developed a feel for what FSD Beta can and can't do. And yes, experiences vary wildly, from "It works well and I use it a lot" to "I've cancelled my FSD subscription". We all have a personal list of situations and edge cases where it doesn't work well, or at all. So when I received the update, I took the car on a route I do frequently: my house to the gym and back. Prior FSD versions have handled this route with varying degrees of success, but the past several versions have demonstrated consistent problems at specific places that 11.4.2 seems to have resolved.
Improvement #1: The car must make two right-hand turns at stop signs to exit the housing division I live in. Visibility to the left is marginal on both turns. Heavy bushes block your view to the left of the first turn, and an uphill crest restricts visibility to the left on the second turn. Previous FSD iterations handled these turns by:
-- Stop well back of stop sign, confusing following drivers
-- Inching forward
-- Inching forward
-- "FSD creeping forward" notice on dash
-- Inching forward (car behind me honks)
-- Sudden, lunging acceleration into the turn.
With 11.4.2, the car pulls confidently up to the stop sign, makes a single, short forward motion to check traffic to the left, and then pulls smoothly and confidently through the turn.
Improvement #2: Lane choices are much better. Going to the gym, the car turns left onto a 3-lane street. In 2.5 blocks it will need to turn left to get onto the highway. With earlier FSD versions, the car would turn into the far left lane, then almost immediately move to the middle or right lane (which lanes seems to depend on traffic). Since traffic tends to back up at the freeway entrance, this often left the car in the wrong lane to get onto the highway, and it would miss the entrance since it couldn't merge into the existing line of cars.
With 11.4.2, the car turns into the left lane and stays there. A similar "wrong lane" situation occurs when I'm returning from the gym, with the car existing the highway to the right and moving into the far left lane when a right turn is coming up in 2 blocks. This also seems to have been resolved.
My experience has been limited so far but it's looking very good. The progress of FSD reminds me of the progress made in speech recognition: I was writing speech recognition software for the Apple ][ computers in the early 80s (yes, I'm that old). At the time you had to train the system on individual words, many repetitions of each word were involved, and the possible vocabulary was very small (10-15 words). Over the years the training sessions became faster and the vocabulary size increased. Sometime in the 90s we hit the point where you could dictate (Dragon Dictate, anyone?) as long as you paused..slightly...between..each..word. And you still had to read a few paragraphs to the computer first.
Now, my iPhone recognizes continuous speech in real time, completely on the device, with no training necessary. This wasn't heralded as a giant breakthrough; speech recognition just got incrementally better over time. FSD seems to be heading along the same path, but MUCH faster. I dunno if Elon will ever achieve L3 or above with the current setup, but 11.4.2 makes me optimistic it will at the least be a very useful feature.
I'm certain there will be people whose experiences are nowhere near as positive as mine. What's your experience with 11.4.x been?
