5 ms·

For comparison, here is a look at Waymo's simulation operations: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulat

• dclowd9901 8y ago
  > Being in the car a lot, I can feel what the car is doing—it sounds weird, but—with my butt He's describing, incidentally, how professional drivers drive.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • hangonhn 8y ago
    Can you expand on that a bit more?
    • Tuxer 8y ago
      As you become "good" at driving in harder conditions, you'll use your butt (which is really how you're physically connected to the vehicle) to figure out the traction state of the car, to know if the car is sliding, if it's close to losing the rear end or the front end, if it's pitching down or up, and so on. This is how you know which corrections to make to the vehicle to keep it going fast without losing control. Pilots of small planes do the same thing. After a while you can just feel small accelerations and change of directions without needing to check some of the instruments.
      • QuercusMax 8y ago
        Huh, fascinating. I remember reading a Star Wars novel ages ago in which they said that one of the things that made Luke Skywalker a good pilot was that he slightly detuned his craft's inertial compensators (or whatever the Star Wars version is) so he could feel how the craft responded. Didn't realize that was actually based on real life driving/flying!
        • bmelton 8y ago
          The common complaint against "new" vehicles and their drive-by-wire systems is that they functionally act as inertial compensators, dampening road feel. If the roads were perfect, you wouldn't necessarily want them (day to day), because it diminishes the minute vibrations that make their way up to the pedals, into the steering wheel, etc., and those things give you feedback into what the car is doing that are invaluable. Of course, the roads aren't perfect, and most of us aren't doing high-performance driving on them, and we don't need anywhere near that degree of feel, so the benefits of driving by wire far outweigh the cons of analog driving.
      • deleted 8y ago
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      • amalcon 8y ago
        Hence the expression "to fly by the seat of one's pants".
        • notduncansmith 8y ago
          TIL! I always assumed that was one launching onesself into an endeavor with so little forethought as to be facing the wrong way.
      • verelo 8y ago
        Your last paragraph was what I came here to say: I fly a small Cessna 172 and when i first started to fly i was being cleared to solo and the instructor who cleared me gave feedback on my landings at the end. His main remark was "You'll start to feel it in your rear soon enough, it comes around the 150-200 hour mark, but in the meanwhile, trust the instruments and your visual indicators". Ironically you're simultaneously taught to always trust the instruments over your inner ear, and generally as much as I do get the buttock feeling now, I would say my primary focus remains on the visuals + instruments.
      • ams6110 8y ago
        Though pilots have to be careful, because feelings can be deceptive especially if you can't see the horizon (clouds, night). In those conditions you must trust the instruments over what you are feeling.
    • lightedman 8y ago
      Not a professional driver, but I've ripped up several racetracks and done plenty of drag racing as an older teen. Your butt tends to feel everything if you don't have ultra-cushy seating, and because of its position relative to the vehicles center of gravity, it will feel more of the effects of various vehicle movements versus the arms or legs. Tune in long enough and you can literally read the road you're travelling just by how it feels, roughness, amounts of liquid on the road, etc. Ever notice how your butt tries to move more than your hands and feet when making a sharp turn at a moderate speed turn, and how you instinctively correct for it in your seat by leaning or shifting around? Know the phrase 'Fly by the seat of my pants?' Pretty much all of that rolled into one bundle of instinctive attunement.
• pcl 8y ago
  This is off-topic, but the Atlantic's GDPR click-through is probably the best-put-together and most-understandable one I've seen.