Wiki MASTER THREAD: Actual FSD Beta downloads and experiences

[spokey]

I was thinking yesterday that if my Google Home, Siri and Alexa can translate what I speak into text format the technology is there for Tesla to do the same with their vision. With all the cameras, software and engineers behind the scenes I would expect our cars to perform the basics. I still love my car and for me the pros outweigh the cons.

hopefully better than my alexa which gets it right maybe a bit more than 1/2 the time

 

[Hamilton237]

I don't think reading the signs will be the hard part... even the school zone stuff can be managed by persistent or dynamic data, not AI/ML. Those school zone times are always the same, the school doesn't move. The car can detect 'children present'. It may require coordination with municipalities/DOT type organizations to get the data or it can be user curated. Understanding how to respond to temporary or short term construction and detours seems like a harder challenge. Like stuff that isn't mapped and may be different day to day or hour to hour.

 

[willow_hiller]

Like stuff that isn't mapped and may be different day to day or hour to hour.

I was thinking that the sign-reading final boss will be things like arbitrary messages on dot-matrix displays. They frequently use grammatically incorrect phrases, short hands, and abbreviations. And they can have multiple parts of the message cycling on the screen at any given point. For e.g.

Even as a human, it takes a lot of contextual knowledge to understand that this means "Exit A75 Westbound is closed every day from November 28 until December 5 from 7 PM to 6 AM."

EDIT: As proof of how much contextual knowledge this takes, I just realized that this image is from Scotland, and so "A75(W)" isn't referring to an exit. It's the name of the highway. So the entire A75 Westbound highway is closed from those dates and times in this context.

 

[Dan D.]

I was thinking that the sign-reading final boss will be things like arbitrary messages on dot-matrix displays. They frequently use grammatically incorrect phrases, short hands, and abbreviations. And they can have multiple parts of the message cycling on the screen at any given point. For e.g.

View attachment 841966

Even as a human, it takes a lot of contextual knowledge to understand that this means "Exit A75 Westbound is closed every day from November 28 until December 5 from 7 PM to 6 AM."

I guess in a perfect world that information is already connected to the DMV common-source traffic map that 'everyone uses'. If such a standard could ever be proposed, agreed upon, and implemented successfully.

Lots of ifs. But then the car would already know about the information, the sign is just for legacy human drivers.

In the real world, yes it will be tricky for the car to figure out the myriad of different pieces of information and filter out the advertising, election signs, protest signs, and malicious 'mess with autonomous vehicles' signs.

 

[VanFriscia]

I was thinking that the sign-reading final boss will be things like arbitrary messages on dot-matrix displays. They frequently use grammatically incorrect phrases, short hands, and abbreviations. And they can have multiple parts of the message cycling on the screen at any given point. For e.g.

View attachment 841966

Even as a human, it takes a lot of contextual knowledge to understand that this means "Exit A75 Westbound is closed every day from November 28 until December 5 from 7 PM to 6 AM."

EDIT: As proof of how much contextual knowledge this takes, I just realized that this image is from Scotland, and so "A75(W)" isn't referring to an exit. It's the name of the highway. So the entire A75 Westbound highway is closed from those dates and times in this context.

I feel like the "easiest" solution to all of this would be to adopt national standards. That may seem far-fetched, but once the whole autonomous vehicle situation really starts gaining traction and public interest, I could maybe see it happening. Of course, here in the US, we'll probably find a way to turn it into another wedge issue for spewing hate and division...

 

[JulienW]

I feel like the "easiest" solution to all of this would be to adopt national standards. That may seem far-fetched, but once the whole autonomous vehicle situation really starts gaining traction and public interest, I could maybe see it happening. Of course, here in the US, we'll probably find a way to turn it into another wedge issue for spewing hate and division...

You have 50 states and 10s of thousands of local governing bodies and the federal government can only apply complete standards to US highways.

 

[Dewg]

More likely, it will not read these types of signs, and rely either on mapping data, which can't take into account construction, or just logical re-routes. Even crowd-sourced mapping (like Waze) still requires the first person to report something - what does that first person's car do when it hits the closed freeway?

I think the car will just proceed as if the freeway was open, and when it encounters the cones and closed lanes, re-route just as a human would re-route now with basic navigation software on their phones/cars.

 

[spokey]

You have 50 states and 10s of thousands of local governing bodies and the federal government can only apply complete standards to US highways.

in theory. In practical terms they can force all the states. Remember the 55mph limit? Imposed by saying to the states they won't get any federal highway funds.

 

[2101Guy]

WHen I see and read about some of these real life edge cases (or even just, cases), it REALLY reinforces how absurd it was for Elon to claim "LA to NYC via Smart Summon by 2019". Hes literally a genius. He HAD to know that was not a realistic statement by ANY stretch.

But..it did get lots of FSD sales...

 

[willow_hiller]

it REALLY reinforces how absurd it was for Elon to claim "LA to NYC via Smart Summon by 2019". Hes literally a genius.

I think it's fair to say that Elon really lacks social intelligence. I'm pretty sure that most of his extraordinary claims are mentally prefaced with "A non-zero chance of...", but he doesn't say that part out loud too often, and doesn't understand that most people don't think probabilistically in the same way.

 

[hybridbear]

FSD Beta for us still tries to run red lights, as someone commented, it seems to be an issue with LED traffic lights. The problem is that basically all our traffic lights around here are LEDs. For context, the video was filmed earlier today in Richfield, MN.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I drove to work this morning without using FSD Beta. It was much easier and more relaxing. I think I was also more alert to what other vehicles were doing.

 

[JulienW]

FSD Beta for us still tries to run red lights, as someone commented, it seems to be an issue with LED traffic lights. The problem is that basically all our traffic lights around here are LEDs.....

Aren't 99.9% of all traffic lights LED? You still have incandescent traffic lights in Richfield? I can't remember the last time I saw an incandescent traffic light.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The problem is that basically all our traffic lights around here are LEDs.

Not sure why you would conclude that. In some situations FSD Beta will just go on red lights. I don’t think it is due to the type of light. It is just something that happens; no big deal. That is why it is not driving!

 

[sleepydoc]

Aren't 99.9% of all traffic lights LED? You still have incandescent traffic lights in Richfield? I can't remember the last time I saw an incandescent traffic light.

We still have quite a few incandescent lights around here. I think they’re replacing them with LEDs as they break or burn out but I haven’t heard of any plan to systematically retrofit them.

Not sure why you would conclude that. In some situations FSD Beta will just go on red lights. I don’t think it is due to the type of light. It is just something that happens; no big deal. That is why it is not driving!

Unlike incandescent lights LEDs actually blink or flash at 60 Hz. There’s a theory that the flashing combined with the shutter speed of the car camera creates a temporal interference pattern that makes it appear that the lights are flashing causing the computer to interpret them as a flashing red light.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Unlike incandescent lights LEDs actually blink or flash at 60 Hz. There’s a theory that the flashing combined with the shutter speed of the car camera creates a temporal interference pattern that makes it appear that the lights are flashing causing the computer to interpret them as a flashing red light.

Oh I know that they can potentially be interpreted as flashing if there is something wrong with the programming when dealing with aliasing of the LED PWM pulsing and the video frame rate (that being said, as a complete tangent, it seems perfectly possible from a design perspective that an LED traffic light would not have to pulse at all - though I have certainly seen defective ones flash, it’s not mandatory unless they use PWM for brightness control rather than current modulation). But just saying it is not necessary to explain this behavior. There’s no reason to think that FSD Beta would not proceed on a solid red light, LED or incandescent.

Need to have realistic expectations about capabilities and limitations! People were tripped up by a similar scenario (FSD will hit VRUs under some conditions) last week…many people were initially convinced the test was not showing a limitation of FSD…but of course they were wrong.

 

[hybridbear]

Aren't 99.9% of all traffic lights LED? You still have incandescent traffic lights in Richfield? I can't remember the last time I saw an incandescent traffic light.

Many municipalities around here have LED traffic lights, others do not. When we did a recent 5000 mile road trip I was surprised at how few LED traffic lights we saw. I expected a much higher percentage.

Not sure why you would conclude that. In some situations FSD Beta will just go on red lights. I don’t think it is due to the type of light. It is just something that happens; no big deal. That is why it is not driving!

I've seen that only when activating FSD Beta too close to a stop sign or light. Where have you seen that happen?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I've seen that only when activating FSD Beta too close to a stop sign or light. Where have you seen that happen?

In the situation you describe, and also it has cruised right through (tried) a right turn on a red light.

But even if it had never happened we would know that it does happen. It just makes sense.

 

[sleepydoc]

Not sure why you would conclude that. In some situations FSD Beta will just go on red lights. I don’t think it is due to the type of light. It is just something that happens; no big deal. That is why it is not driving!

Ignoring red lights is a bigger deal than other facets of FSD because stoplight detection is part of TACC outside of FSDb.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Ignoring red lights is a bigger deal than other facets of FSD because stoplight detection is part of TACC outside of FSDb.

Right, that’s why it is important to pay attention, because the vehicle will go through red lights, given the right circumstance. Hopefully it is rare! But definitely we expect it. That’s why we’re the ones keeping an eye on the red lights, and responsible for stopping, when using TACC (and FSD!).

I don’t have any reason to believe when I have seen it that there has been any detection problem of course. (On the right on red I even had cabin video showing the red light.) It’s likely been more on the response side. But probably both can be in error.