my eyes are roughly at the same level as the pillar camera so I don't have to worry about hitting the glass with the top of my head.
The pillar cameras generally face forward so aren't much use for backing up.
Mostly since the image shown on the screen will change between updates. After the last update, I can now see my license plate in the image that was not in view before the update. The camera is a very wide fish-eye, the entire image would not be ideal for the main use of the camera in backing up and parking but error be nice to have the option of zooming out for instances like this.
Indeed, it does seem pretty wide - a lot wider than the picture suggests - though I don't think it is any wider than it was before, you definitely can see the plate. I remember seeing the top of the trunk lid in the corners before, and it seems that I can still see the same amount of those.
The concern I have is this, though:
Initially, when backing up, the car will be able to see traffic on either side. (A lot more angle than I thought.)
But as it backs up further, it will tend to have larger and larger blindspots! Obviously physically not possible to see around the rear bumper edges (and lacks a couple degrees before that as you can see, at least on one side, for me).
So a little different than I thought - it's not what it initially sees that is the issue - it's whether it can continue to see. I'm not sure how the car is going to get around this unless it remembers what it sees. At some point it'll be far enough out that other cameras can see, but that will lead to a significant period where it can't see traffic.
I'm not convinced that parking nose out will help much though. First, the radar will have limitations on field of view as well. Probably more so than the backup camera. So it will suffer from the increasing blindness problem as well. The only benefit I can see to parking nose out is that the cameras will become helpful earlier; for coming out forwards, you "only" have to come as far as the windshield (when the wide angle front camera will become useful). While for backing out, the only other cameras facing in the right direction for backing out are on the front quarter panels! You have to come out a
long way before they are useful! (It's even possible the pillar cameras might be useful first, depending on the situation with blocking vehicles.)
Posting a couple pictures to show how wide the angle is. You can see in the second and third pictures about what you can see...car is sitting about 18 inches in front of the cement line of the edge of the garage.
