Tesla has fixed a long-standing Full Self-Driving (FSD) visualization bug. The bug has been around for so long, the fix even drawing a candid reaction from Andrej Karpathy, former Sr. Director of AI at Tesla.
If you have ever used FSD, you have probably noticed that the surrounding cars displayed on the visualization “jittered” across the screen. You can see this bug in the video below, where the cars passing on the other side of the road appear to jump down the lane, instead of smoothly passing by. This jitter has been around for such a long time that you have probably gotten used to it and don’t notice it as much anymore.
FSD 12.4.2 Michigan Left
— Dirty Tesla (@DirtyTesLa) July 2, 2024
Full video: https://t.co/h57oQCOq8g pic.twitter.com/h5oC9x8cnO
As with many changes to Tesla’s software, this bug fix wasn’t included in the release notes of update 2024.32.30, which included FSD v12.5.6 and went out to HW4/AI4 cars yesterday. However, it didn’t take long for FSD testers like @AIDRIVR to start noticing a change in the visualizations, sharing on X that passing cars no longer “jitter at all.”
As it turns out, there was a change. Ashok Elluswamy replied to the post confirming they had finally “fixed a four year old bug in the rendering!”
Because we fixed a four year old bug in the rendering!
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) October 9, 2024
As we mentioned above, you are probably so used to seeing the visualizations jitter across the screen that you don’t even notice it anymore, but once you see the new visualizations in action, you realize just how much of a difference this change has made.
Here’s what they look like now on a HW4 Model Y.
Look how smooth, crazy https://t.co/GAJ9n2uGlm pic.twitter.com/Z3xs4ZRVx0
— Dirty Tesla (@DirtyTesLa) October 9, 2024
This might not seem like a big deal, but it was to former Sr. Director of AI at Tesla Andrej Karpathy, who responded to Elluswamy’s post with, “omg.”
Unfortunately, Elluswamy didn’t go into the details of what exactly caused the bug in the first place, and what was done to fix it. However, it is likely won’t have an impact on the performance of FSD, but rather just improves the overall experience and confidence in the system.
Since this version has been limited to HW4/AI4 cars, we don’t know yet if this fix will also be applied to HW3/AI3 cars, especially those with the older Intel MCUs. We assume that it will, but we have asked Elluswamy for confirmation.
