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Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

> Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR and 2) how incredible the human brain is compared to computers.

And, less excusable, ignorant of how incredible human eyes are compared to small sensor cameras. In particular high DR in low light, with fast motion. Every photographer knows this.

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And also ignorant about how those two eyes have binocular vision, adjustable positions, and can look in multiple mirrors for full spatial awareness.

There are good arguments but this isn’t one. Many humans (like me!) drive fine without binocular vision. And the cars have many cameras all around, with wide angle lenses that are watching everything all the time, when a human can only focus in one direction at a time.

I thought only the front view has binocular vision on the cars. The others are single, with no depth perception. How does it know how close objects are outside this forward cone?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378671275/figure/fi...

I’m guessing the fields of view overlap for any 2 adjacent cameras, so you can get parallax measurements from any angle.

So your eye does not have an adjustable position and you cannot use mirrors?

Both are easily compensated for by having many cameras.

Binocular vision is not only relevant for driving (well, maybe for the steering wheel, but that's not the point).

It gives us depth perception. And moving the eyes and/or head gives the depth perception over a wide field of view.

What I mean is that binocular vision just give us depth perception for a meter or so - about around where our hands can touch.

Moving the head/body goes a little further, but that was not my point.

Is this true? I'm looking at a tree outside and I get parallax when I close one eye and then the other. I thought the parallax is the basis for depth perception.

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