Tesla adds stop sign and traffic light 3D renders in move to city driving visualization

Tesla is adding new stop sign and traffic light 3D renders to its Autopilot visualization as it moves to enable more capabilities for city driving and intersections.

Over the last few months, Tesla has been spending more time on its driving visualizations.

Powered by Autopilot’s suite of sensors and the automaker’s computer vision system, Tesla renders the vehicle’s surroundings on the screen.

It’s in no way a substitute for monitoring surroundings yourself, but it has been regarded as a confidence builder for Autopilot.

The visualizations have improved over the years, and they are increasingly showing more of the environment accurately, with Tesla adding trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, and pedestrians over the years.

Earlier this summer, Tesla released one of its biggest updates to its driving visualizations with the capability to zoom in and out, as well as moving the visualization around to see 360-degrees around the car.

Last month, the automaker also added construction cones to its visualizations.

Now Tesla is adding new stop sign and traffic light 3D renders, according to Tesla hacker ‘green’:

btw Tesla keeps adding 3D assets. Too bad I have not figured out how to do the textures in blender yet so you only get to see the model itself pic.twitter.com/saHB9uElHc

— green (@greentheonly) December 7, 2019

and here's one of the traffic lights. pic.twitter.com/xCTawanjKe

— green (@greentheonly) December 7, 2019

These are expected to be added to Tesla’s driving visualization displayed in the instrument cluster on the Model S and Model X as well as on the center display in the Model 3.

The new renders, which involve intersections, come as Tesla is supposed to introduce more advanced driver-assist features meant to help city driving as Autopilot does for highway driving.

It would be part of what CEO Elon Musk calls the “feature complete” version of its full self-driving, which Tesla aims to push (at least to its early access owners) by the end of the year, which is just a few weeks away.

Electrek’s Take

As I said before, I see the driving visualization as some kind of confidence builder for Autopilot and eventually Tesla’s self-driving system.

With Tesla moving toward self-driving, the feature is going to be useful to show the driver (who will eventually be a passenger) what the Autopilot sees and thinks, which should build confidence in the system.

Not unlike Tesla’s last self-driving demonstration, where we saw updated driving visualization, Tesla needs to now include renderings of intersections to show how it perceives them and eventually how it plans to act in them.

I am still skeptical about Tesla’s self-driving timeline, but I see the company making a lot of interesting moves in the right direction – indicating that they are indeed getting closer to the goal.