161
submitted 5 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] irish_link@lemmy.world 123 points 5 months ago

Why is a car capable of playing games in the first place. I understand it’s not going to allow people to play while they drive but still. That just seems like an odd/bad idea.

[-] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 80 points 5 months ago

It's just a computer... Why not? As long as it cannot be running while the car is driving I don't particularly see an issue.

Would be great if I could fire up a game while waiting in cell parking at the airport for my family that comes into town for example. Gotta remember that this isn't new. We had minivans with built in n64s and shit before.

[-] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 64 points 5 months ago

And don’t forget, depending on the charger, you could need to burn 15 to 45 min filling you battery up on a trip. The games and videos are primarily there to make the charging experience suck less.

[-] irish_link@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers at task oriented locations. Almost all Grocery stores, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 months ago

Why not bring a Steam Deck or Switch along? Or just play on the phone in your pocket? Are people really spending so much time in their cars that it really needs conveniences like that?

[-] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 21 points 5 months ago

I'm primarily a PC gamer... The only game on my phone is Bloons TD6. Which I open maybe once a month.

But why not use the computer that's literally in front of me rather than settling for the lesser experience?

Note: I should clarify, I don't have a Tesla and don't care for them at all. I just view this feature as probably one of the better ones.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

How is bloons td6? I loved 4 and 5. Would be fine tossing some dollars at ninja kiwi if 6 is up to par. I've also seen it in Netflix and confused about how I feel about that.

[-] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh it's a decent time killer. I don't really do mobile games. I only did this one strictly because of the nostalgia (Original on library computers in high school sort of thing) and because it was on a sale. I haven't regretted the purchase and they don't make the in app purchases super necessary. Overall I'd give it a thumbs up. I don't do any of the multiplayer stuff either.

And I don't know anything about Netflix in regards to td6.. I did see that Mr.Beast did a sponsorship with them...

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

I have a steam deck, and while its somewhat portable, I wouldn't want to carry one just to use at a charging station, considering the alternative is a controller stashed away in the glovebox. Probably also would want to carry the deck whenever leaving the vehicle too, considering how common it is in certain regions for some tesla models to be broken into and boot emptied out (apparently preventable with a 3d printed shim).

With the crazy powerful GPUs in these cars IMO it's practically free to enable this functionality for the user when the car is stationary, on a screen that is much, much larger and with a nicer sound system compared to any handheld or phone

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

As long as it cannot be running while the car is driving

This is Tesla... So only as long as the state enforces it...

[-] irish_link@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

That’s a fair point. I honestly had not thought about the “waiting for” aspect.

[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 33 points 5 months ago

Why a bad idea? Why an odd idea? It's a powerful computer with a decent size monitor in a place where sometimes people have to sit and wait. What am I missing because seems like a logical / good idea to me?

[-] irish_link@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago

Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers, grocery store, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago

Not even just waiting to charge. Picking someone up, but your schedule gets you there 15 minutes before they're available? Why not put that computer to use?

load more comments (7 replies)
[-] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 29 points 5 months ago

Electric cars have a very legit use case for this… extended charge times. The video games and streaming apps are so you can kill time.

Telsa’s have pretty fast charge times, but even those are slower than a gasoline fill up. Moreover, if you get cursed with charging at a non-Telsa station, you could be there for quite a bit.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

A lot of people camp in them too.

[-] irish_link@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers, grocery store, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.

[-] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, sometimes you’re in BFE and there isn’t much around. Other times you just want to eat fast food in your car like an animal and watch a TV show that is too embarrassing to watch on the couch with your significant other.

[-] trainwreck@lemm.ee 23 points 5 months ago

People are so used to megacorporations controlling what specific software they can run on their general-purpose computers that they are now... in favor of it? Every day it seems more and more the case that Apple's anti-sideloading propaganda is successful.

[-] barsquid@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I don't want a general-purpose computer in my car. I want a screen to do the federally-mandated backup camera and physical buttons for everything else.

[-] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

Buying a Tesla would be a huge mistake then

[-] trainwreck@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

I'm in the same boat. I fucking hate modern cars. There are no acceptable options so I just walk and use public transit... the data collection is so extensive I feel uncomfortable even catching a ride in a friends car.

[-] dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 5 months ago

As someone without an electric car, i always assumed it was for something to do while charging.

[-] cmac@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

The cars already have decent GPUs to process the camera data for driving assistance features, so someone at the company probably just thought it would be neat to do something with that computing power when it's not being used for driving.

[-] Voyajer@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Wasn't it marketed as something to do while the car charges originally?

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago
[-] trainwreck@lemm.ee 12 points 5 months ago

Do you mean to suggest that videogames are for children? I don't really see where you're coming from here.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

No, nothing like that. I’m just calling Elon a petulant man-child.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] kelvie@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 months ago

I never wait around while the car is charging (generally only charge at home), but this has been useful for waiting to board a ferry, actually being in the car on a ferry, and waiting for road closures to clear.

I also do have a steam deck, and this is basically the same thing but with a bigger screen.

[-] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

Probably similar to why you can make the turn indicator make fart noises or have the car "dance" by flashing lights and opening doors and such. The hardware is there so why not. Utterly pointless features but atleast it's something the competition isn't doing I guess.

Tho I must admit that it was quite funny when I once heard a guy lock the doors on his Tesla and instead of the generick "click click" it said "quack" instead.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 41 points 5 months ago

TIL: Tesla is not powered by batteries. It's powered by steam. Lol.

[-] Coreidan@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago
[-] accideath@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Well howdya think they make the steam?

[-] Pacmanlives@lemmy.world 30 points 5 months ago

Geewiz I bought my my car to play Steam game!! /s

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

"lose steam"

In which way?

(For those that didn't get it, the joke is a double entendre.)

[-] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[-] Bipta@kbin.social 5 points 5 months ago

They're probably not interested in reading the article, but in case they care to read the title of the article you shared: New Teslas might lose Steam

[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

It's literally the fist sentence of the article:

Tesla might be dropping Steam support

[-] autotldr 6 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Tesla’s message alerts the customer that the company is “updating the gaming computer” in the Model X and says it’s “no longer capable of playing Steam games.” The message ends with a button for the customer to confirm they will proceed with the delivery.

And we’re not seeing any signs that the automaker plans to remove Steam from current owners’ vehicles through a software update.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had hyped Steam as a selling point, advertising the new GPU as powerful with the ability to play top-tier games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Initial 2021 models were not installed with sufficient RAM to support the advertised games, so Steam was not included.

There’s speculation that Tesla might be backtracking on powerful gaming hardware in new Model S and X vehicles.

Musk has been busy squeezing the company through hot-headed layoffs in an effort to make the company “absolutely hard core.” Tesla scaled back on what a new low-cost vehicle will look like and is going all in on building a robotaxi, which means games like The Witcher are no longer a priority.


The original article contains 323 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago

Oh no... anyway.

Whether my car can play games has no bearing on whether I'd buy that car. So, this is a nothingburger.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
161 points (93.0% liked)

Technology

59174 readers
2352 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS