I'm actually shocked at V11.3.4

My opinion of FSD has been pretty low for a long while now. I got FSD Beta in the 2nd 'original wide' groups in Oct '21. The ending months of 2021, FSD was a toy, but a potentially lethal one. It tried to kill me 3 times. I engaged in a parking lot with a stop sign to the main street about 10 meters ahead. FSD ran up to the stop sign and tried to run directly into traffic. It was a perpendicular road and it didn't stop and it wanted to go straight into the road with oncoming traffic in both directions. I since learned that any engagement in parking lots if dodgy.

Into 2022, FSD was mostly safe with no behavior I would describe as 'literal danger'. FSD however was too annoying to use in many circumstances. I received update after update, and hoped things would improve, but was disappointed every time and eventually ignored the hypetrain and paid no attention to updates. My biggest primary complaints were

1. It would make very dumb lane selections. Driving on a 4 lane divided avenue (2 lanes each direction) and needing to make a right turn onto a perpendicular 4 lane divided avenue via a turn lane. With the turn about 30 meters off, FSD every drive and after every update would insist on being in the left lane. I could force the car to the right via turn stalk, and it would get right back in the right lane. Engaging FSD in the left lane with the same behavior. Many similar scenarios, not just this 1 example.
2. I've posted in a few threads here that when FSD is making a turn, particularly left turns (protected left or not) - that FSD driving feels like Tweek from South Park is driving. Spastic wheel shifting, hesitant stop and go, and jarring

In the end I would just cancel FSD approaching any turn and do it myself. A non-turning FSD is basically just standard autopilot then.

Now, V11 FSD is announced (tweeted.. i guess..). Having FSD handling the interstate sounded pretty nice, but I didn't get too excited. A good thing as it took about 3 weeks to get it after first 'going wide'. I did my 1st commute to work today with V11. I live north of Nashville TN and work south of it so my commute is fairly long at about 50mi of interstate each way with 4x interstate intersections to navigate. I immediately notice that V11 will bias left or right away from large vehicles, Semi trucks and regular trucks with trailers. I also notice when trying to take an interstate curve with a 60MPH speed limit at 80MPH - V11 will actually STAY CENTERED in the lane.

These 2 improvements are enough to wow me. Huge huge improvement. I've historically canceled AP/NoAP very regularly when trucks get to close and AP just sits there and would let you get hit or spaz with the red steering wheel of death signal and beeps. AP/NoAP would also bias to the outside lane divider of a curve, putting your car uncomfortably close to the car in the adjacent outside lane. I'm very pleased with V11's improvement over AP/NoAP here. V11's lane selection is also very good on the interstate. It gets in a leftward lane to pass slower cars very well. It also sees cars approaching from the rear that are faster than you and gets back into a rightward lane. Very nicely handled

Now as to the city streets portion of V11, I haven't yet spent a whole lot of time there yet. I did notice that the #1 list item's example intersection was handled correctly this morning. It finally did not insist on being in the left lane for a right turn. Finally!!! WOOO!!! haha. I've had FSD also do maybe 3 or 4 protected lefts and they were much much smoother than any prior version

I'm fairly certain FSD will never be truely autonomous in the lifetime of my car, but I now have some hope that it might be a fully capable L2 ADAS system that will fully drive with supervision and significantly less intervention from annoyance, danger, and incorrect behavior

Finally - a release where I actually observe true improvement as well as new useful features!

 

[Rikster]

My experience with 11.4.3 is similar. I used 10.69.2 every day, but definitely had to disengage it routinely on turns and roundabouts, knowing it would fail (or be too slow) on those. I still enjoyed the things it did right, and got a lot of good use out of it.

With 11.3.4, the amount of times I need to disengage have been reduced quite a bit. Still not zero, but much closer, and a welcome improvement. My disengagements are still mostly for my own comfort, and not a critical safety problem, though I've had a couple of those too. As a L2 ADAS, I'm pretty happy with the update, and don't mind remaining vigilant to known (and unknown) issues as I'm driving.

If I expected the car to be actual Full. Self. Driving., I'd be perpetually cranky about it (like so many people on this forum seem to be). As it is, I find it fairly "magical," and have been driving for over 40 years dreaming of a day my car would be this good.

 

[DrChaos]

The main difference is that they have finally gone to a heavily machine-learning/neural network based planner instead of rules based. Perception has been machine learning since the beginning of course.

This change will make many behaviors more natural and appropriate most of the time, but it will also mean that reducing some corner cases and anomalies will be very difficult as there is no clear way to 'patch' them. They can try retraining with differently weighted training data but that can hurt performance on whatever was previously working well.

 

[Dewg]

The main difference is that they have finally gone to a heavily machine-learning/neural network based planner instead of rules based. Perception has been machine learning since the beginning of course.

This change will make many behaviors more natural and appropriate most of the time, but it will also mean that reducing some corner cases and anomalies will be very difficult as there is no clear way to 'patch' them. They can try retraining with differently weighted training data but that can hurt performance on whatever was previously working well.

We can definitely feel it when a previously hard coded section is replaced by a neural net, or an older NN is replaced with a new one. Many "regressions" people feel are due to this.

 

[BobDolesGhost]

1. It would make very dumb lane selections. Driving on a 4 lane divided avenue (2 lanes each direction) and needing to make a right turn onto a perpendicular 4 lane divided avenue via a turn lane. With the turn about 30 meters off, FSD every drive and after every update would insist on being in the left lane. I could force the car to the right via turn stalk, and it would get right back in the left lane. Engaging FSD in the right lane with the same behavior. Many similar scenarios, not just this 1 example

Just noticed I flubbed my lanes in the example descriptions, just like FSD of old

Thanks for the responses. I may re-review some release notes and try to see what traditional control loop logic shifted to NN and the effect. May be an interesting study. I'm a firmware engineer in a kind of 'industrial controls and monitoring' field and everything I do is endlessly repeating control loops (+interrupt event handling)

 

[Khashoggi]

11.3.4 did great today on city streets and highway. Around San Diego airport it did fine but is too timid and no match for aggressive humans that are in a rush.

no more ping ponging down residential streets is very welcome.

 

[dgatwood]

This change will make many behaviors more natural and appropriate most of the time, but it will also mean that reducing some corner cases and anomalies will be very difficult as there is no clear way to 'patch' them. They can try retraining with differently weighted training data but that can hurt performance on whatever was previously working well.

There's a third option, you know. You can have a neural network, but with procedural code or whatever that says, "No, you can't get that close to the wall. I don't care what you thought you saw in that one frame." Basically, use hard-coded logic to provide guard rails.

 

[rubyred]

Totally agree with OP. 11.3.4 is the first FSD beta that doesn’t feel like “work” to use. Before this, I would excitedly try a new version for the first couple drives, then after that, I’d have to psych myself up and be in the right mindset to have a super stressful and hypervigilant drive. Obviously vigilance is still priority one… but I find myself finally using FSD as a comfort tool for the first time. So awesome.

 

[DrChaos]

There's a third option, you know. You can have a neural network, but with procedural code or whatever that says, "No, you can't get that close to the wall. I don't care what you thought you saw in that one frame." Basically, use hard-coded logic to provide guard rails.

I'm sure there are some hard coded rules but this makes it even more difficult to manage and the interaction can cause poor behavior as well. Rules can be wrong too---and neural networks might be more robust to transient perception errors as they would be trained on realistic data which had those errors.
I suspect some of the phantom braking people experience might be due to such rules.

Of course a nnet would also be able to assimilate and fuse multi-modal sensors, like cameras and radar, contrary to what Elon said. Of course both radar and vision make mistakes but with enough work you can get a combined improvement.

 

[FOOLSLFDRVNG]

I really hate the exaggerated drift to the left when someone approaches a parked car and opens the door and FSD treats the person like a 600 pounder carrying an XXXL .

 

[DrChaos]

I really hate the exaggerated drift to the left when someone approaches a parked car and opens the door and FSD treats the person like a 600 pounder carrying an XXXL .

There was a few of those in the training set I'm sure. Or a child or dog bounding out of the seat while not looking.

 

[Aayyo]

My opinion of FSD has been pretty low for a long while now. I got FSD Beta in the 2nd 'original wide' groups in Oct '21. The ending months of 2021, FSD was a toy, but a potentially lethal one. It tried to kill me 3 times. I engaged in a parking lot with a stop sign to the main street about 10 meters ahead. FSD ran up to the stop sign and tried to run directly into traffic. It was a perpendicular road and it didn't stop and it wanted to go straight into the road with oncoming traffic in both directions. I since learned that any engagement in parking lots if dodgy.

Into 2022, FSD was mostly safe with no behavior I would describe as 'literal danger'. FSD however was too annoying to use in many circumstances. I received update after update, and hoped things would improve, but was disappointed every time and eventually ignored the hypetrain and paid no attention to updates. My biggest primary complaints were

1. It would make very dumb lane selections. Driving on a 4 lane divided avenue (2 lanes each direction) and needing to make a right turn onto a perpendicular 4 lane divided avenue via a turn lane. With the turn about 30 meters off, FSD every drive and after every update would insist on being in the left lane. I could force the car to the right via turn stalk, and it would get right back in the right lane. Engaging FSD in the left lane with the same behavior. Many similar scenarios, not just this 1 example.
2. I've posted in a few threads here that when FSD is making a turn, particularly left turns (protected left or not) - that FSD driving feels like Tweek from South Park is driving. Spastic wheel shifting, hesitant stop and go, and jarring

In the end I would just cancel FSD approaching any turn and do it myself. A non-turning FSD is basically just standard autopilot then.

Now, V11 FSD is announced (tweeted.. i guess..). Having FSD handling the interstate sounded pretty nice, but I didn't get too excited. A good thing as it took about 3 weeks to get it after first 'going wide'. I did my 1st commute to work today with V11. I live north of Nashville TN and work south of it so my commute is fairly long at about 50mi of interstate each way with 4x interstate intersections to navigate. I immediately notice that V11 will bias left or right away from large vehicles, Semi trucks and regular trucks with trailers. I also notice when trying to take an interstate curve with a 60MPH speed limit at 80MPH - V11 will actually STAY CENTERED in the lane.

These 2 improvements are enough to wow me. Huge huge improvement. I've historically canceled AP/NoAP very regularly when trucks get to close and AP just sits there and would let you get hit or spaz with the red steering wheel of death signal and beeps. AP/NoAP would also bias to the outside lane divider of a curve, putting your car uncomfortably close to the car in the adjacent outside lane. I'm very pleased with V11's improvement over AP/NoAP here. V11's lane selection is also very good on the interstate. It gets in a leftward lane to pass slower cars very well. It also sees cars approaching from the rear that are faster than you and gets back into a rightward lane. Very nicely handled

Now as to the city streets portion of V11, I haven't yet spent a whole lot of time there yet. I did notice that the #1 list item's example intersection was handled correctly this morning. It finally did not insist on being in the left lane for a right turn. Finally!!! WOOO!!! haha. I've had FSD also do maybe 3 or 4 protected lefts and they were much much smoother than any prior version

I'm fairly certain FSD will never be truely autonomous in the lifetime of my car, but I now have some hope that it might be a fully capable L2 ADAS system that will fully drive with supervision and significantly less intervention from annoyance, danger, and incorrect behavior

Finally - a release where I actually observe true improvement as well as new useful features!

View attachment 925383

Only issue? You cannot predict when it will do the craziest things. After getting it right many times in a row, you may find it doing it wrong the next time. Yikes, that’s what you’re supervising. But it takes most stress off driving. As long as you know your route, stop it before it does illegal or dangerous stuff, keep it in track, and take over when it can’t do the stuff safely. Tesla told us it’s beta. Tesla warns it can do the craziest things at the worst time. Tesla tells you yiu are responsible for your driving the car; fsd or no fsd. So I guess we know the risk. We bear our responsibilities. We are not complaining. Comments are meant to help Tesla get it right.
Glad to finally see some improvement in FSD Beta.
TESLA NEEDTO STATE THAT ‘FSD WITH HUMAN SUPERVISION IS SAFER THAN HUMAN DRIVING ALONE WITHOUT FSD’. THAT WILL BE A TRUTH.

 

[TRWhit]

My commute is about 60 miles each way. About half on rural roads with no shoulders and no outside white lines. V10 was almost unusable on these roads. It would panic brake with nearly every on-coming pickup truck. The roads are narrow enough that the trucks pretty much have to ride the yellow line. V11 has completely resolved this issue. It just biases a bit to the right and keeps going. Animal recognition seems better now too. It slowed for a stray dog on the side of the road and braked to avoid colliding with a crow that flew across my path. Only consistent issue I've had with both it and V10 is trying to stop at stop signs for roads that cross at acute angles. The signs are angled enough that even an inexperienced human driver might be confused by them.

Still get phantom braking. It still slows down a bit too much on off-ramps (for my taste). The weirdest one is that it still wants to miss a well marked exit off and interstate highway onto a secondary road. V10 would sail right past it about half the time. V11 hasn't taken the exit yet.

 

[FOOLSLFDRVNG]

It doesn’t see the 3 imaginary buses inside my garage anymore.

 

[Aayyo]

It doesn’t see the 3 imaginary buses inside my garage anymore.

It sees my powerwall as a car!

 

[legendsk]

I rearranged the stuff in my carport. The imaginary red semi that flickered in and out of this dimension vanished. Now the car sees the bicycle parked against the wall on the far side, but has created an imaginary rider on it.

 

[SteelClouds]

As I said somewhere else.. Full Self Driving doesn't exist. Its a fantasy and a pricy one at that. The original promise was to get into the car, punch in where you wanted to go then let it drive you there. Doesnt work, wont work for a very, very long time. What we do get is a very sophisticated driver assisted driving aid. In the first two drives of the newest FSD software, it tried to drive into a parked car, ran a red light, tried to turn right while sitting at stop light ( made blinker work and literally turned the wheel) , gets confused by our neighborhood round about, hugs the right way, way too much barely missing badly parked cars, tried to change lanes to the right in stop and go traffic even though we had to make a left in less than 100 feet and completely missed the freeway off ramp speed limit sign of 45 vs the 65 of the highway. And that was just two drives totaling less than 20 miles in suburbia. The second drive I have on shaky video since I was hand holding my iphone while grabbing the wheel here and there.
There is a serious disconnect between the stories of "OMG, its so good now" vs the rest of us with the "OMG, it tried to kill me 6 times in the last 6 miles". Some I put down to selectively edited fanboys at work. Some I put down to being on very well marked, newer streets/highways. Around here there is a distinct correlation between new/newer and smoother driving vs older and sketchy driving. I know people say Tesla doesnt use maps but it sure could fool me. I also saw this when I left suburbia in CA for the wilds of Tombstone and the likes in AZ a few days ago. Not nearly as reliable on old highways or frontage roads or dirt roads ( leading to ranch). I also saw for the first time the car has serious issues with mirages. Those cool highway mirages where it looks like there is a lake across the road in the distance. Phantom braking every single time. It also did that when shiny tanker trucks passed me.. I think the very bright tanks blinded the cameras and the car freaks out.
And I have not even gotten to the lack of "seeing" speed bumps, pot holes or dips in the road. In AZ, the roads are terrible right now with serious pot holes.. the cars wants to barrel along at 75 regardless. Doesnt even slow down. Parts of Highway 93 are awful right now with the big rigs dodging huge holes in the road.. not FSD.. full speed ahead.
FSD seriously degrades at night.. the proof is the car keeps trying to use high beams to see where it's going. It doesnt much care for rain either. I have had it several times refuse to engage due to bad weather or disengage because of camera obstructions ( water drops on the lens)
The promise was FULL SELF DRIVING.. not driver assisted.. not sometimes self driving.. not super cruise control.. FULL SELF DRIVING. Based on my own experience of the last year, It wont happen any time soon or later. Way too many "edge cases" that we humans take for granted and just deal with. Like pot holes and high school parking lots . I see it really more of a super duty driver assist. Highway is awesome.. someone else pointed that out and I agree most of the time ( mirages aside). City driving not so much. Its actually less mental work for me just to drive vs trying to babysit the car in town.

 

[Aayyo]

Still my point. With supervision, …., you may have a superior experience,
what ever better experience with FSD needs the qualification: supervised by human being. my MY22 does take me to work, with at least two disengagements on a 3.5 mile stretch of well marked roads. Sometimes up to four disengagements when I just take over and drive the rest of the way. 8 protected left turns, one right turn are in the route.
Unable to do an unprotected left across a two lane road to turn into work perimeter road; it calculates in a U-turn which it cannot complete either.
Selects a wrong lane twice,
sometimes unable to complete a protected left when it picks the outer lane of a two Lane left protected turn and other are cars making their protected left turn from the opposite lane.
sometimes selects bus stop instead of the road. And shakily/jerkingly corrects itself.
yes, ascribe the fsd experience to the versatility of the human driver supervising it or call it a driver assist.

But every Drive is still an adventure: oh , the suspense! You don’t know what the car will do; and you don’t know when it will.

 

[BobDolesGhost]

There is a serious disconnect between the stories of "OMG, its so good now" vs the rest of us with the "OMG, it tried to kill me 6 times in the last 6 miles"

It has definitely tried to kill me in the past, but not for about a year or so. I said that above, and yesterday it might have gotten a little homicidal for the first time in a long while with me at the wheel.

My V11.3.4 '18 M3P FSDb was engaged on a downward sloping fairly straight on ramp to I65. The car sped up to about 70MPH and I got nervous. Traffic on I65 was practically stopped, going maybe 10 MPH. It got close enough to the merge that I hit the brakes and steered away. I'm not sure what it thought it was doing or what it would have done if I hadn't taken over. I may have let some explative words loose on the disengagement dictation note

Definitely needs supervision still. Definitely have no delusions that it will be fully autonomous or even a consistent good and rarely fails L2 ADAS, in the next 3-5 years. Maybe longer. Maybe much longer. It really is hard to pin down. It won't be never, but probably past the time that sale my M3 for a newer model.

V11.3.4 still has significant improvements and I'm glad I have it. I bought my car used and paid a prorated rate for FSD, something like $4k. The current FSD sale price though is rather crazy. Off topic though

 

[flstcgranucci]

Took a road trip from South Orange County, CA to Scottsdale, AZ yesterday. Almost 800 miles round trip. The trip was basically a good one in comparison as prior trips. I liked how the car provided more space while passing trucks or larger vehicles. In the past, you could reach out and touch them when passing. Acceleration is better when stopped traffic ahead of me is better, rather than waiting 20 seconds to make up its mind to start catching up.
Major issues with navigating now. I missed two freeway transitions as the car waited way to long to get into the correct lane. One of those Crazy Ivan's requiring me to intervene. Second problem was trying to navigate to the most important destination, a supercharger. That was a complete cluster as the car seemed to get lost and was taking routes that a blind man could find. Had to cancel that route and found another SC.