Matrix Headlights aim too high while driving?

[Jack_Dangerous]

It seems my matrix headlights low beam is dazzling people, but it seems to aim too high only while I'm driving. When I'm stopped, the headlights aim below other cars windows, but when I'm driving i can sometimes see the people inside the cars in front of me, i do get flashed quite a few times and yesterday a car i overtook on the motorway went behind me and turned on its high beams on purpose for a bit, i can only guess it was because of that.... which was kinda stupid if their objective was to get back at me since i have auto dimming mirrors anyway.

 

Has anyone had this issue? I plan to take my car to the dealer but I'm sure they're going to say "everything seems to be normal"

Edited 9 March, 2023 by Jack_Dangerous

[Towelie]

Have you tried manually adjusting the headlight height? Little white nylon “bolts” can be rotated with an Allan key to adjust both vertical and horizontal. 

Edited 9 March, 2023 by Towelie

[Jack_Dangerous]

I could do that, but won't it mess up the matrix leds of the high beam without being calibrated?

[Towelie]

I’ve not had an issue with mine when re-adjusted following the vehicle being lowered. 

[Jack_Dangerous]

Cool!

 

One thing i've noticed is that i don't remember anyone with LED headlights on their cars ever flashing me, it's always old cars or newer cars with regular bulb headlights, i wonder if there's something about driving a car with regular lights that makes your eyes more sensitive to the white light from LEDs at night. Could just be coincidence though.

[fox2319]

Is the blanking cone centered on the oncoming cars? I had a problem when I owned an Octavia that the matrix lights were blanking an area offset to the intended arc by around a car width. This made them dangerous to use and was one of the reasons I rejected the car in the end. If you've got a dashcam, take it for a drive and then look at the video afterwards. This may also be useful if you're showing the problem to the garage. In my experience, they were worse than useless during investigation. They would simply park the car against an MOT test wall and say that everything looked fine.

[alancha]

This is interesting to me as I too have noticed that the dipped beam seems high.  In fact, if I switch from dipped to main (i.e. auto) beam, when I'm behind another car, I see the beam lower from more-or-less level with the bottom of the back window, to well below that.    I too get flashed even when driving on dipped beam.  

 

I've almost completely given up relying on the automatic matrix mode on normal roads now as find I'm being flashed all the time.  If I see another vehicle approaching on the other side, I dip the lights as I always would have done in the past.

 

I included this issue in my complaint to Skoda UK about software issues (mostly ACC, which is now fully fixed) but they wanted me to have my lights checked at a dealer.  However, my local dealer doesn't have the required equipment to do this and I'd have had to take it about 50 miles away to find one that did, so I'm afraid I gave up on that and just accept that the matrix headlights don't really work as claimed.

 

 

[liveseytowers]

How old is your car?  I seem to remember the earlier Mk4's had issues with the ACC where it through the car was left hand drive, i imagine this would also affect the matrix lights as well.  I think its been fixed with the software updated early owners were often complaining about being flashed by other road users.

[Felix2021]

Try to disable AFS in the vehicle settings.

Recently started to see same thing in my car, however i've been changing headlights coding (enabled map assisted AFS). For now driving with AFS disabled and no one flashes me.

[Jack_Dangerous]

 

22 hours ago, liveseytowers said:

How old is your car?  I seem to remember the earlier Mk4's had issues with the ACC where it through the car was left hand drive, i imagine this would also affect the matrix lights as well.  I think its been fixed with the software updated early owners were often complaining about being flashed by other road users.

My Octavia is from 2021, if i recall correctly i got the mail telling me the car was in the production line in January or beginning of February.

 

21 hours ago, Felix2021 said:

Try to disable AFS in the vehicle settings.

Recently started to see same thing in my car, however i've been changing headlights coding (enabled map assisted AFS). For now driving with AFS disabled and no one flashes me.

How do i disable AFS? I don't have navigation on my car because it's pretty expensive and Waze works perfectly with wireless android auto while being free 😅 (i mean, doesn't work that perfectly since it restarts android auto every time i lose cell data connection but i think that's Xiaomi's and Android Auto's fault)

[Felix2021]

You can disable AFS in vehicle settings->headlight. It might be called differently, like "assisted headlights" or anything like that. In my case it's second option from the top.

As for maps, if you have Bolero, than you have maps, but not navigation. Car is using maps for many purposes, including matrix headlights and travel assist. Bolero and Columbus are basicaly same hardware, with satnav blocked in software for Bolero. But maps are there in both cases, and are actively used by multiple systems in the car.

Edited 15 March, 2023 by Felix2021

[Jack_Dangerous]

Interesting, I've tried disabling the option and it seems to have helped, and it makes sense that even without the maps enabled it still uses their function since they're still there. I'll have to drive a few more times at night to make sure but it definitely seems to make things less bright above the road and on the side walks.

 

Many thanks for the tip, Felix!

[Felix2021]

Glad i could help

It's strange though, as for me it started happening only after i changed the coding. Before no one was flashing me when i had AFS on.

To be honest tried to figure out how AFS works in O4, but couldn't. It's really strange. For example in matrix headlights you can see clearly, that it has static cornering lights, but for some reason i have never seen them in action, instead fog lights are used as cornering lights. Tried to find some coding options, but couldn't figure it out.