How's the touch screen holding up?

[mspohr]

The touchscreen and software optimizations make the UI for car setting & control tasks, choosing apps, backup camera, all run just fine.

Where it is molasses and seriously shows the weakness of the processor is the Web browser. Even on LTE with good strength or on a strong WiFi, the web browser is frustratingly slow. Scrolling graphically intense pages is quite laggy.

Map loading is sometimes slow, and this may be dependent on data, and screen updates of the map when zooming in or scrolling can be a bit sluggish but quite acceptable.

I'm not sure if there's anything more Tesla can do to make the web browser any faster -- it's no better now than when I got my car in 2013.

I'll bet the center console hardware will be upgraded in step with Autopilot 2.0 if we assume it uses the center console's processing power vs a separate coprocessing module.

The web browser software is an old version which lacks support for more modern protocols (such as HTML5). This could be an advantage in that it is "simplified" or a disadvantage in that it has not been properly optimized (browser code has made great strides in handling JavaScript in recent years which may not be in the Tesla browser).

 

[mspohr]

Maybe a little OT at this point, but is there not a way to edit a thread title after the fact? I'd hate to have people's feathers being ruffled due to my snarky title.

When I ruffle feathers I like to mean it, not do it accidentally

Don't worry about it. I think we're on track now.
(Only mods can edit the title.)

 

[ecarfan]

Maybe a little OT at this point, but is there not a way to edit a thread title after the fact? I'd hate to have people's feathers being ruffled due to my snarky title.

When I ruffle feathers I like to mean it, not do it accidentally

Use the "Report" link shown with your latest post and request a Moderator change your thread title to something more neutral. You can suggest the specific wording you would like.

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

the Last big update, actually made my touch screen feel snappier. It's still not iPad Air 2 snappy, but it's more than enough, and it blows away ANYTHING anyone has ever (factory) put in a car.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

With the model S running what is at least a 4? year old computer to drive the main display, I'm wondering how sluggish it's been recently with the latest updates?

From what I've seen there's no rumor/indication on an upgrade to the hardware?

The age of a computer or CPU has little bearing on its ability to handle a given task. Tesla's operating system is very lean, has little overhead, and doesn't require a large amount of processing power. The GPU that's in there is more than adequate to move around the number of pixels required for the intended use.

 

[mikeash]

I have to disagree on that last part, the GPU is rather inadequate for such a gigantic screen. This is obvious any time you scroll just about anything, whether it's the list of navigation favorites or the big map view. Most of the time you'll see something in the neighborhood of 10-15fps or worse, not the 60fps you really want for true smoothness.

Now, 10fps is still perfectly usable, but it's not as good as it really ought to be.

 

[Camera-Cruiser]

I for one would pay for a CPU/GPU upgrade.

 

[David99]

I love my Tesla but I'm not 'fan-blinded'. The touch screen UI has been on the slow side when the car came out. It wasn't really laggy but not fast by any means. Navigation depends on the internet connection which causes some additional delay. Living in a dense area of a large city (many of us do) the sheer number of roads cause the navigation redraw to be laggy. The little navigation screen in the dash board has constant delay and redraw issues on my car. Every touch on the main screen has a 1/3 second delay. You can never do a quick touch and drag action like you can on any phone or tablet today.

Is it useable? Absolutely. Is it on par with what is the standard on phones and tablets today? Absolutely not. Phones and and tablets are updated every year, so the gap gets bigger all the time.

The only thing that is impressive is the size and that's it's built into the car. But it terms of usability, I think it's slow and the entire UI feels dated. Functionality is also limited. Any tablet or phone from 4 years ago can do so much more and was faster. The built in web browser is almost useless in terms of speed and features. I mean what's the point of having this awesome screen there but then I still have to mount my phone because that's where all the useful tools are.

I think it would be immensely useful if screen mirroring with a phone was an option. That would take the burden off Tesla to constantly play catch up with Android and iOS. They could focus on the core car functionalities and let users switch to their phone screen to do all of their stuff.

 

[dpodoll]

Maybe a little OT at this point, but is there not a way to edit a thread title after the fact? I'd hate to have people's feathers being ruffled due to my snarky title.

When I ruffle feathers I like to mean it, not do it accidentally

You can request a mod change it. Don't know of a way we can do it ourselves

 

[benjiejr]

I agree with @David99 - I still love it, but it could be better. If there was a reasonably priced option to upgrade I would consider it.

 

[scottm]

Remember that the older screens you are asking about holding up, are installed on cars without auto-pilot. These cars (mine included) have less software to run because of that. So that offsets the bloat of software somewhat, which traditionally bogs down "older processors".

You also have to remember that older screens are attached to computers that have last gen 3G cell radios. So the responsiveness of some features is gated by that. I upgraded my cell radio to LTE. After doing so, overall responsiveness increased a bit for some use cases because of that, but no difference in "touch response" in terms of pure UI interaction, which stayed the same.

Also recall, that some hardware issues of 'bubbles' appearing on edges has come up on some of these older screens, which has been addressed on other threads. "Holding up" might mean hardware reliability to some people.

FYI - my center console stack was replaced (like for like) when a problem (no nav) called for it. So it's not like Tesla automatically refreshes old computers with "latest version" for warranty or replacement work. You get what the car came with. Don't expect better than what is delivered.

 

[Skotty]

The web browser sucks. But it always has. Everything else works fine. Could it be more responsive? Sure, but it's plenty reasonable.

 

[bob_p]

The hardware should be capable of driving the console at reasonable performance.

The browser is more of a "proof of concept" than a usable app, because it is so slow (even on WiFi) and doesn't support enough features to be compatible with many websites (including some of the Tesla website). Several years ago, Elon said we'd be getting up updated browser - haven't seen any obvious improvements yet - and we've basically given up on using it. Even with the smaller screens, our smartphones work much better for web browsing.

The map display can be very slow at times - but that's due to slow communications to download the maps. Since the maps in the local area don't change that often, if Tesla would cache the map in the area around the car, map performance would improve considerably.

The navigation software has had a problem (don't know if it has been fixed) if your navigation history gets very long. The software remembers every destination - so the history list can get very long. Months I ago I was seeing significant slow downs in the navigation software - and clearing most of the history fixed the problem. [It took a long time to do that though, because I had to delete each of the old destinations one at a time.]

The software developers know their target hardware - so they are aware of the hardware constraints - and when they implement changes, they should be able to implement the software to provide reasonable performance.

 

[mikegre]

Say what you will about the Tesla screen, whenever I sit in another car and look at that screen, I laugh.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I have to disagree on that last part, the GPU is rather inadequate for such a gigantic screen. This is obvious any time you scroll just about anything, whether it's the list of navigation favorites or the big map view. Most of the time you'll see something in the neighborhood of 10-15fps or worse, not the 60fps you really want for true smoothness.

Now, 10fps is still perfectly usable, but it's not as good as it really ought to be.

You don't need 60 fps scrolling in a vehicle interface. The GPU is perfectly adequate for what is needed and there are no frame-rate issues with the Autopilot animations and interface.. We aren't playing first-person shooters in our car on the 17" screen where we would need 60 fps refreshes.

If you are experiencing laggy performance, I suggest you delete your navigation history. That is a documented issue that slows down the UI performance over time.

 

[mikeash]

No, you don't need 60fps, but it would be nice to have it for a smooth UI.

I have deleted my navigation history. It definitely helps. But even under optimal conditions, there is frequent stuttering. Maybe you're less sensitive to it, but it's simply not good enough to call it smooth with any consistency, and that's because the SoC is greatly underpowered compared to the huge number of pixels it's driving.