Does anyone know what that visualisation is about? It doesn’t bother me, but it also doesn’t help me or give me any useful information.

If it showed me the road behind me, for example, that would be super useful for lane changing. But it doesn’t.

I have never once been able to work out what it does, and would love to see the map take up the whole screen, or maybe a list of route instructions could go there.

I also noticed that the “full self driving preview” option seems to have disappeared (it never worked anyway, guessing it’s because we drive on the left)

My assumption was that it was to help build confidence in their self-driving by always showing you what it sees no matter if it is control or not. It does have some effect in that you start to get a feeling of what situations the car has a good idea about the surroundings and when it struggles.

There is probably a "it looks cool" factor that doesn't hurt.

As far as UX options. Providing customization is old-school thinking these days :/

In my car it doesn't even look particularly cool. The visualisation from FSD that I've seen people post on the internet does look nice, but that's not what I see - I get a very low detail representation of the lines on the road, and occasionally the vehicles ahead of me. I think that's what it used to look like before FSD, but it seems like the FSD preview hasn't arrived in Australia yet.

It does show some indicators form proximity sensors.

Pretty much though what the other commentor said - to give a visualization into the self driving for the user.

When traffic cones and street signs were added to Autopilot - you can bet that visualization was updated to show it off.

Same when they added stop light detection.

It makes sense to me. For some, that visualization literally _is_ the AI, for all they know.

I (almost) never use that. I expected it to be more distracting than it is though.

I have the screen dimmed right down. You can also choose dark mode.

I think Tesla needs better salespeople, there's a lot of things that I found out after purchase that makes me like it more.

Dark mode was on. She hated that more than light mode actually, said it looked like a horror thing (she's not wrong).

It might sound minor, but that visualization is on the part of the screen close to the steering wheel 100% of the time you're driving. If it's distracting to you, it'll be distracting any time you're driving, and you can't turn it off.

It's like a running shoe that comes with a pebble permanently stuck inside.