Wiki MASTER THREAD: Actual FSD Beta downloads and experiences

[Silenus136]

No, I haven't lost faith, but I do wonder if Tesla will end up focusing on one state (like California) instead of trying to solve the problem for the entire USA all at once. I think what's happening right now is Tesla is solving many issues for one locale, whereas other locales may have regressed or become stagnant.

Have you tried using Assertive? I find that it works better for me.

Yes, I have tried assertive. Have also tried playing around with following distance and such. Kind of assume FSD overrides all that in the interest of having consistent feedback-loop data for improvement? Regardless, I haven't been able to perceive any difference based on those settings, though tbh, only test FSD in limited periods, just because it is so wonky and so demanding to operate.

 

[EVNow]

No, I haven't lost faith, but I do wonder if Tesla will end up focusing on one state (like California) instead of trying to solve the problem for the entire USA all at once. I think what's happening right now is Tesla is solving many issues for one locale, whereas other locales may have regressed or become stagnant.

I’ve read this CA bias a few times. In this case the poster who lost faith is from CA.

More importantly, the way Tesla FSD works, you can’t really “solve” for CA and not others. Despite what many here think, US is a lot more uniform than many other countries.

You have to just see youtubers, for eg. Infact most of the people I watch are not in CA !

As I wrote before, only thing where CA might be better off is with maps - the roads that internal testers try. But the testers probably use only a tiny fraction of all paved roads in CA.

 

[JulienW]

...More importantly, the way Tesla FSD works, you can’t really “solve” for CA and not others. Despite what many here think, US is a lot more uniform than many other countries...

Yeah, this always gets me a little. You hear it from the YouTubers all the time. XXstate drivers are different than XXstate. XXstate driving is different than XXstate. In reality the differences are nuance at best and whether you are in a City, Suburban or Rural area will make a MUCH bigger difference that what state you are in.

 

[Ben W]

That someone would be very wrong. Let's not downplay the reality FSD still chooses the wrong lane periodically. It can misinterpret traffic signals when there's a dedicated turning light. In addition, 10.5 seems to fail to signal in some cases. I've seen all 3 of these in the course of a day (yesterday).

One quirk I've noticed is that even when it does signal, it always begins signaling a fixed distance from the intersection, rather than a fixed distance before merging into the turning lane. For long turning lanes, this means it doesn't signal at all before swerving into the turning lane. I've always understood that proper behavior is to signal 100ft or so before actually merging/turning. And yes, it seems to choose the wrong lane (or a shoulder or bike lane that it incorrectly thinks is a driving lane) fairly often; this is responsible for about half of my disengagements I'd say.

I can live with the steering wheel hunting wildly during a turn, and I am fine to nudge the accelerator to urge the car to be less timid. But attempting to run a red, or choosing a turn lane to go straight are clear indications of how unsafe FSD beta can be.

Or squeaking through a yellow, having the light turn red while it's in the intersection, and hard-braking to a stop in the middle of the intersection rather than continuing through. See at 1:05 in this clip, which we found particularly worrisome:

 

[Oil Freedom]

I hadn't even thought about metered ramps. That raises a question. Some say "1 car per green," while others say "2 cars per green." Can it read the sign to make the right decisions?

Based on my experience recently, it doesn't yet read / handle the 1 car vs 2 car metering. Instead, it treats it like a regular intersection traffic light.

 

[Iain]

One quirk I've noticed is that even when it does signal, it always begins signaling a fixed distance from the intersection, rather than a fixed distance before merging into the turning lane. For long turning lanes, this means it doesn't signal at all before swerving into the turning lane. I've always understood that proper behavior is to signal 100ft or so before actually merging/turning. And yes, it seems to choose the wrong lane (or a shoulder or bike lane that it incorrectly thinks is a driving lane) fairly often; this is responsible for about half of my disengagements I'd say.


Or squeaking through a yellow, having the light turn red while it's in the intersection, and hard-braking to a stop in the middle of the intersection rather than continuing through. See at 1:05 in this clip, which we found particularly worrisome:

where I live we have a ton of long turning lanes and the car will ignore those lines until it’s much closer to the light and then cross the solid line to join ( if it can). I would think in the grand scheme of things this is a fairly easy fix but right now my biggest headache.

This morning I did a six mile drive and the car was amazing. It drove with zero slow downs, it didn’t make a single mistake. Amazing. Fast forward and I get my car washed and it was like I had new software going home. It picked the wrong lane, had multiple slow downs and to top it off it sprayed the windshield and used the wipers, making my clean car dirty

 

[EVNow]

I hadn't even thought about metered ramps. That raises a question. Some say "1 car per green," while others say "2 cars per green." Can it read the sign to make the right decisions?

You are talking about the kind of edge case one only thinks about after getting the basics right. FSD is yet to master a lot of basics.

 

[alee]

Or squeaking through a yellow, having the light turn red while it's in the intersection, and hard-braking to a stop in the middle of the intersection rather than continuing through. See this clip:

Oh yes, this also happened to me as well. I think it can be generalized that on some level, once you make a decision, you need to be committed to it. More acceleration is your safest move once you're "in the box". Lot more work to be done here.

 

[EVNow]

Oh yes, this also happened to me as well. I think it can be generalized that on some level, once you make a decision, you need to be committed to it. More acceleration is your safest move once you're "in the box". Lot more work to be done here.

Unless you are crashing.

 

[Ben W]

Oh yes, this also happened to me as well. I think it can be generalized that on some level, once you make a decision, you need to be committed to it. More acceleration is your safest move once you're "in the box". Lot more work to be done here.

FSD's current behavior is much more reactive than proactive, which is problematic. Oftentimes the safest driving situation must be created (by taking initiative) rather than simply by being responded to; e.g. when it's ambiguous whose turn it is at an intersection. FSD treats these situations passively and timidly, when it would often do much better to take the initiative and create its own right-of-way. Its creeping-forward behavior exacerbates this by giving other drivers the false impression that it is trying to take the right-of-way, when in practice it almost never does.

 

[Oil Freedom]

I guess I was typing when you posted this. Sounds like radio and not infrared, in spite of my comment just above.

There are different systems for this. One of them is only light sensing and responds to the strobing lights of emergency vehicles.

 

[Ben W]

Unless you are crashing.

FSD doesn't currently seem to consider "being crashed into" as crashing. It should.

 

[powertoold]

I’ve read this CA bias a few times. In this case the poster who lost faith is from CA.

More importantly, the way Tesla FSD works, you can’t really “solve” for CA and not others. Despite what many here think, US is a lot more uniform than many other countries.

You have to just see youtubers, for eg. Infact most of the people I watch are not in CA !

As I wrote before, only thing where CA might be better off is with maps - the roads that internal testers try. But the testers probably use only a tiny fraction of all paved roads in CA.

I don't think my point came through, but we'll see. At this point, we can only wait for upcoming releases.

I don't think the USA is that uniform when it comes to road geometry and road objects (islands, poles, markings, barriers, etc. etc.). This is especially difficult for NNs.

 

[EVNow]

I don't think the USA is that uniform when it comes to road geometry and road objects (islands, poles, markings, barriers, etc. etc.). This is especially difficult for NNs.

See arbitrary videos on youtube and try to figure out what city it is without looking at landmarks / street names / foliage or geography.

I'm not saying everything is standardized. But we tend to exaggerate differences and downplay commonality.

I always get a chuckle when someone posts NYC is so different than all other cities for driving

 

[Phlier]

One quirk I've noticed is that even when it does signal, it always begins signaling a fixed distance from the intersection, rather than a fixed distance before merging into the turning lane. For long turning lanes, this means it doesn't signal at all before swerving into the turning lane. I've always understood that proper behavior is to signal 100ft or so before actually merging/turning. And yes, it seems to choose the wrong lane (or a shoulder or bike lane that it incorrectly thinks is a driving lane) fairly often; this is responsible for about half of my disengagements I'd say.


Or squeaking through a yellow, having the light turn red while it's in the intersection, and hard-braking to a stop in the middle of the intersection rather than continuing through. See at 1:05 in this clip, which we found particularly worrisome:

At 1:15 in the video,
Wife: "I am ready to end auto pilot for the night."
Car: <sound of AP engaging>

Yup. Sounds about right.

I really hope Tesla uses your clips.

One thing to remember... The consensus seems to be that the car has space for five saved clips. Continuing to push the Report button the sixth time supposedly over writes the first clip saved, with each successive push overwriting the next oldest, etc. This has not been confirmed to my knowledge, but it might be worth considering. I mention this as I believe there were six Reports done on this drive. I do agree with each Report you did, it's just that there's a good chance you're over writing good stuff that needs to be sent to Tesla.

IMO, this is one question that Tesla really needs to answer for us to be effective guinea pigs... er.. beta testers.

It would also be very helpful if Tesla could add a "send reports now" button. Sure, they don't want a huge LTE bill from guys sending in a ton of clips, so they could only make the button available when the car is connected to WiFi.

Also, adding some sort of UI that shows how many clips are stored and how much room is left for additional saves would be nice.

There's a pretty good chance this is going to be a very long, drawn out beta. If Tesla wants us to be effective testers, they need to give us the tools to do so.

 

[Oil Freedom]

Overall, this version of FSD Beta is a slight improvement for me. Some observations:

• Freeway: Better at handling traffic merging onto freeway through better/earlier planning and changing lane when possible.
• VRUs: Great job giving cyclists extra space when passing and also lowering passing speed when appropriate.
• Curves: Takes them too widely, even on marked roads. Hugs the edge of the lane and gets to close to traffic in neighboring lane.
• Unmarked roads: Stays to the right more on unmarked residential streets. Curves around parked cars. Still needs improvement, particularly for curves.
• Turns: Unnecessarily moves to the opposite side of the lane before a turn.
• Phantom braking: Persists in its various forms, both day and night.
• Parking lots: Slight improvement, but still abysmal (both steering and navigation) and not really usable. In one empty parking lot, the car actually gave up after stopping and showed a message asking me to help now. Later in the same parking lot after it was driving again, it nearly ran into a planter island, and I had to slam on the brakes.
• Turn signals: Still getting some random turn indicator activation. Other times when the turn indicator is needed, it turns them on later than I would.
• Accelleration: Better when entering freeways and other busy roads, but not consistent and too strong sometimes on residential roads.
• Intersections: Still not the far right partial lane for right turns when that's available. For one lane roads, it's still taking it's half of the lane from the middle instead of the left or right side to make room for cars turning in both directions.

So, when's the next release?! Maybe next weekend?

 

[alee]

I always get a chuckle when someone posts NYC is so different than all other cities for driving

I am seen.

It is different, even if the traffic controls are largely the same. We have some very complex scenarios that are unique to us, just as other cities have their own quirks. Certainly above 14th St, it's all grid so easy to navigate right and left, but obstructed view lefts and rights are common and cannot be handled the way the car really wants to. And there's also the fine art of nosing yourself into a lane because nobody is going to just let you in. The way the car is now, I'd probably have to go 10 blocks out of my way to make a left turn because there's enough traffic to pin me to the center lane forever.

And as with all cities, many norms for experienced locals that don't really match against what the car wants to do. For instance during rush hour, even though the right lane is the only turning lane for people headed for the tunnel, the 2 right lanes are usually the ones to be avoided because of lane cutters blocking - ultimately only the left lane is a viable thru-traffic lane at times.

 

[EVNow]

It is different, even if the traffic controls are largely the same. We have some very complex scenarios that are unique to us, just as other cities have their own quirks.

What "very complex scenarios" that are unique to NYC ?

The way it looks to me - NYC is a busy city, set in a grid, with lots of traffic & pedestrians and tall buildings. No different than any other city downtown in US, except it is larger than others. But FSD has to deal with one road at a time - so that makes no difference.

Double, triple parked ? No big deal - it happens in a lot of places and is just an obstruction the car will go around. Seen any airport departure area ?

ps : There are NYC videos you can see too. Looks no different than other downtowns.

 

[alee]

What "very complex scenarios" that are unique to NYC ?

The way it looks to me - NYC is a busy city, set in a grid, with lots of traffic & pedestrians and tall buildings. No different than any other city downtown in US, except it is larger than others. But FSD has to deal with one road at a time - so that makes no difference.

Biggest ones that come to mind that I'm dealing with is what I can best describe as a funnel merge. The merges entering the Holland are a really good local example entering NYC... 4 and 5 lanes into 1 lane, which are not marked. FSD cannot handle this. It's not a standard zipper merge situation... it's 5 toll booth lanes for 1 lane of actual traffic, and another 4 into 1 on the other side. I've only seen something like this in a few cities with terrible urban planning.

One I'm looking forward to testing is reversible lanes on bridges and tunnels. Many cities have it but they all look and are marked differently. It's these nuances that make driving in certain cities unique.

 

[EVNow]

Biggest ones that come to mind that I'm dealing with is what I can best describe as a funnel merge. The merges entering the Holland are a really good local example entering NYC... 4 and 5 lanes into 1 lane, which are not marked. FSD cannot handle this. It's not a standard zipper merge situation... it's 5 toll booth lanes for 1 lane of actual traffic, and another 4 into 1 on the other side. I've only seen something like this in a few cities with terrible urban planning.

Isn't this more a freeway thing - rather than city FSD ?

Anyway - a large number of lanes merging into fewer is not unique to Holland tunnel.

ps : I'm not saying NYC doesn't have anything unique. Every city has some unique things (like Lombard Street or the Monorail). All I'm saying is - overall NYC isn't so unique in so many fundamental ways as to make FSD totally different for NYC compared to other cities.

There are indeed cities that are so different that FSD would have to be differently trained for them - like South Asian cities. NYC is not that.