New FSD Beta 10.12 visualizations: new car models, open doors and turn signals

New car models used in FSD Beta 10.12 visualization

mariapazz000/Twitter

The first signs of Tesla's FSD Beta 10.12 finally surfaced yesterday as Tesla employees started receiving the internal beta.

The internal beta initially had a version of 2022.12.3.10, but it looks like Tesla has aleady issued an update with version 2022.12.3.15 (FSD Beta 10.12.1).

It's not clear yet whether this will be the exact version that will be rolled out to public testers or if additional updates will be made.

If Tesla finds any major issues, they'll want to fix them before rolling out the update to external testers.

New Car Models

New car models

WholeMarsBlog/Twitter

FSD Beta 10.12 introduces new vehicle models for almost every vehicle type.

Some of the vehicles have been completely redesigned and are more detailed and realistic looking than the previous models.

For example, a sedan now has wheels, windows and a glass roof, instead of the previous simplistic look that resembled a Model S keyfob.

New Brake Lights

Although brakes lights were already displayed as of beta 9.0, Tesla is now displaying the third brake light as well, which has been required in the US since 1986.

Open Doors

FSD Beta 10.12 will now display open doors

WholeMarsBlog/Twitter

FSD Betas have been able to detect and stop or go around vehicles with open doors for a while now, but Tesla will now show open doors in the visualization.

When a surrounding vehicle's door is open, the 3D model will also show the open door and highlight the door in orange.

Turn Signals

FSD Beta now displays turn signals

BLKMDL3/Twitter

Elon said back in the summer of 2021 that Tesla will detect and respond to vehicle turn signals, hand gestures and more in the future.

With this release, FSD Beta now detects and visualizes turn signals in addition to brake lights.

The car will reportedly react to turn signals it has detected as well, which should help understand the intentions of other vehicles.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

The last major FSD Beta release was version 10.11, which was first seen more than two months ago.

Tesla has been working on beta 10.12 for a while now and the amount of changes included in this update are huge according to Elon.

Musk said that due to the amount of changes in this beta, we can expect two steps forward and one step back.

This is a big one! Expect some two steps forward, one step back situations. These will be great ironed in point releases, hence ~10.12.2 or 10.13 for wider beta release.

- Elon Musk

There will be some issues, and in certain situations FSD may have regressed.

Tesla plans to fix any issues that arise with minor revisions to this release. Expect to see additional FSD Beta 10.12 releases such as 10.12.1 and 10.12.2 in the coming weeks.

Current Beta Testers

As we have seen with other recent betas, it may be a while until all current beta testers receive this latest beta.

With beta 10.11, we saw two revisions before the majority of testers received the beta. We may see a similar situation with this update, given the amount of changes that were made.

If you're a current beta tester, you may be waiting a couple weeks before getting this updated FSD Beta.

Additional Testers

There haven't been any signs of Tesla adding additional beta testers in the US since late 2021.

Elon has previously said that he hopes that Tesla will be able to add more testers who have opted in to the beta and have a Safety Score of 95 or greater in later revisions of beta 10.12.

Interpretation of Beta 10.12 Release Notes

We have the technical releases notes for FSD Beta 10.12, but Reddit user asimo3089 did a great job at interpreting the release notes to give us a better understanding of what Tesla has improved in this update.

1. Your car better understands what is and is not drivable space. This makes it more confident in easy situations, and more capable in tricky situations. Your car can also now use medians for difficult left turns, and accelerates quicker to complete turns.

2. Your car now has a better idea of objects blocking camera views. Creeping should be less scary.

3. Improved path predictions of where other others on the road will be. This gives your car better decision making for turns.

4. Sounds like: Your car will drive itself to safety much more smoothly if your car finds itself in a place it shouldn't be. Better problem solving?

5. Your car should better see the lanes on the road, and how many of them there are, thanks to new data. This gives better turn confidence and path planning during a turn.

6. Your car is now trained on 180,000 new clips related to what lanes look like.

7. Your car is less likely to panic brake in a yellow light scenario, and has a better understanding of lane guidance when going through an intersection.

8. Road edges and road lines are now more accurate.

9. Your car now better understands visibility from the cameras, thanks to 30,000 new video clips of training data.

10. Speeds of motorcycles, pedestrians and cyclists is now more accurate. Plus, your car now better predicts which direction a pedestrian is walking.

11. Your car is now less likely to confuse a parked car and an idling car thanks to 41,000 new clips of training data. This should result in fewer "phantom brakes" or silly lane changes.

12. Your car now better understands objects that are far away from you.

13. Your car will plan a better path around vehicles with car doors open.

14. Objects that are not pedestrians, cyclists, etc, should have more accurate speed predictions.

15. When changing into an adjacent lane, your car will look further ahead at vehicle speeds. If somebody up ahead is braking, your car will handle it more comfortably.

16. Your car used to only predict acceleration (Not speed) for objects moving adjacently. Now your car will predict acceleration of all moving objects including objects accelerating across your path.

17. New 3D models for vehicles on your screen. You'll also be shown vehicles with their doors open.

18. Tesla retired a few old systems and gained 2 frames per second, per camera, resulting in better performance while self driving.

FSD Beta 10.12 is currently only available to employees, but we may see a wider release in the next couple days that includes public testers.

However, it could be several weeks before all current testers receive this update.

More details will surely be uncovered about this beta in the next few days. Stay tuned for more.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Not a Tesla App

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

Not a Tesla App

One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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