The EV giant Tesla is ready to release a huge update involving the visual alteration of its Autopilot system to the level of a game, directly through the in-car display. Based on code discovered in the 2025.20 software release, the company is migrating from its existing Godot-based Autopilot fullscreen visualization system to an Unreal Engine-based based. At first, this improvement would seem specific to Model S and Model X, where the vehicle has AMD.
The enhancement will arguably make the Tesla Autopilot interface look and feel better than before, but more importantly, it can be more informative to the users.
From Godot to Unreal: A Leap in Rendering Power
In the past years, Tesla has been using Godot, an open-source game engine, to render the on-screen driving environment used with Autopilot. Functional and effective as it might be, the possibilities of Godot are limited to modern high-end game engines.
Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, is famous due to its realistic graphics, advanced physics simulation, and sophisticated light effects. When it is incorporated into the Tesla Autopilot platform, it may introduce richer 3D scenes, fluent movement of vehicles, and the car, road, people, and other objects may be represented more dynamically.
This shift is especially relevant to the flagship models of Tesla. New infotainment processors developed by AMD Ryzen are substantially more computationally powerful than their predecessors, and so can execute advanced displays without sacrificing performance or causing lag.
Hm, I did not notice it at first, but it looks like Tesla is adding unreal-engine based AP viz (the one you see today is godot-based).
The binaries are already shipping starting from firmware 2025.20 only on amd-based s and x cars for nowtime to see if that could be activated…
— green (@greentheonly) August 8, 2025
Discovered in the 2025.20 Update
The first sign of the upgrade was spotted by Tesla software observers on analyzing the firmware bundle comprising the 2025.20 update. Hidden within the code were outdated binaries and pointers to Unreal Engine integration, which indicates Tesla has already started to ship the said necessities.
The feature at this point is not active to drivers and seems to be testing or staging phase. The early release of this feature indicates that Tesla is laying the groundwork for a wider release in some future release–perhaps once performance has been optimized and the visual output is more fully integrated with real-time driving data in the Autopilot system.
At the time of writing, the binaries can only be found in firmware on AMD-powered Model S and X vehicles. It is also not known whether the update may, after all, enter Model 3 and Model Y, with their different hardware constitutions.
What Drivers Can Expect
Unreal Engine-powered Autopilot visualization should provide the following when applied:
- Increased Detail: With increased detail, the lane markings, road textures, and car models are more exact.
- Better Depth Perception: Better 3D representation to make drivers understand distance and size better.
- Dynamic Lighting and Weather Effects-Possibilities of more realistic lighting effects that change according to the time of the day, as well as according to the weather conditions.
- Silkier Animations: Increased frames and smooth transitions amongst driving states.
Although the system that already exists on the basis of Godot offers a clean and minimalist interface, Unreal Engine can introduce some level of immersion that closes the bridge between driving and simulation. To Tesla drivers who love sleek, innovative cars and the graphics surge of gaming, this may be a very nice advantage.
Although Tesla has not made any official announcement on the Unreal Engine integration, its inclusion only shows that work on this feature is well advanced. If everything goes well in the testing, Tesla drivers might not take long to enjoy Autopilot-visualizations with the level of realism nearly matching that of contemporary racing games. Until then, everyone will be watching new releases of software to determine when the next step in display technology in cars is brought to market.
