Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness
Comments
40four
dhosek
I have the same issue your mom does. First-person shooters give me motion sickness (which is why I never got past the first level of Wolfenstein back in the day). Maybe the newer FPS games would be better for my brain, but I don’t have much interest in trying.
ok_dad
My wife calls it sim sickness, because she can’t do any POV type games like racing or fps, too. She can play WoW or third person games if they’re zoomed out enough.
She also got motion sickness until she turned on the Apple dots.
40four
Yeah that makes sense, rapid onscreen movement, but your surroundings are fixed. I feel like you hear of that version less often, but it interesting it basically the inverse of the other kind.
ebbi
> Maybe the newer FPS games would be better for my brain
It might do. I recently had a bout of nostalgia and wanted to play GTA4 again (as a Uni student I only played part-way through without being able to finish the story). I ended up buying a used PS3 to play it, but I couldn't get through 30 mins of it before feeling nauseous. The low FPS on the PS3 just wasn't sitting right with me.
I ended up getting an Xbox Series S. The constant 60fps on this console was a game changer for me.
port11
It’s a great feature, I’ve been testing it while we drive in the Greek mountains. I don’t know why it’s buried so deep in Settings.
gabeio
You don't need to hide it so deeply, it can be added to your control panel add the control 'vehicle motion cues' and you can add a button which allows you to change it between on/auto/off.
I highly recommend people look through apple's accessibility features every major release they seem to quietly release some real gems.
They hid a whole app for sleep/chill/productivity/wellbeing sounds in there as well!
JumpCrisscross
> you can add a button which allows you to change it between on/auto/off
There is an automatic mode that works perfectly for me.
joshschreuder
You can add it as a Control Center toggle as well which is useful for quickly enabling / disabling without digging through the settings
nxobject
At this point the Accessbility preference panes are just crammed full with tweaks and tools – good if you need them, bad for discovery!
JumpCrisscross
It really works. Just put it on auto and let the phone’s accelerometer control when it turns on.
The crazy thing is if I focus on the dots (versus the text behind them), my nausea comes back.
MBCook
They added it a few years ago. I tried it for about 30 seconds and was so annoyed by how distracting I found it I turned it off and never did again.
I just don’t use the phone when a passenger in a car.
If it works for you and doesn’t bother you as much as me, go for it! I wouldn’t be surprised that it works.
fecal_henge
Maybe for christmas you could get your mom a multi axis driving simulation rig.
madaxe_again
Just get her a rally car, costs about the same and much more fun.
xattt
Any recommendations? I searched, but not sure if the results that come up are just white-boxed versions of the same thing.
advisedwang
Seems like there's a few android equivalents:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.mo...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...
And even one that claims to work with sound:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.a1...
EDIT: Actually there's an enormous number of apps like this, many released very recently with similar style etc. Weird.
Pfhortune
If you're like me and want an open or non-google-play alternative to these, this is available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness/
I can't vouch for it (yet) but am going to give it a try!
jlv2
This one works well. Small, simple, no ads, open source.
jerlam
It's been rumored that Google would build it into Android for years:
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-motion-cues-pixels-n...
I've tried some of those Android equivalents and they seemed to work on any motion, not on acceleration like the Apple one.
thejokeisonme
That's physically impossible.
usef-
I think what he means is that the iPhone dots seem to move based on vehicle acceleration and deceleration, whereas the android ones use all phone motion.
If I move my iPhone around in my hands the dots don't move, but on my android they do (ie are simulating a stable horizon as the phone tilts, immediately). I don't know which is more effective. I thought the iPhone one was broken at first and didn't have the best results from it, I'm hoping the less-subtle android ones will work better for me.
Edit: I read from the docs that Apple's works best when facing forward, and I was often sitting sideways on a train
lucb1e
That's strange, any idea how it could be able to differentiate?
My only guess is some sort of processing, like wait and see if it follows the expected acceleration pattern (moderate initial acceleration from the unexpected-to-the-user car motion, followed by a stronger acceleration in the same direction as one's hands push the phone to keep it in the same visual place) but I'd assume such lag is precisely the issue VR etc. has and makes people extra sick. By the time you've counteracted it, your brain has clearly registered that the movement is disjointed from the visual input, so then it's too late for them dots to help right?! That couldn't possibly work (or could it). Very curious how this works. Like, surely it doesn't need to be connected to a compatible car?
Edit: wait, or the camera. That would be very battery-intensive (I guess theoretically it could turn on only 1% of 1 color channel on the sensor, but I'm not aware that this is a mode that the hardware/firmware supports), but when you move it yourself, then the camera would see motion in the opposite direction as when you're unexpectedly being moved such as in a car. Still seems unlikely
jerlam
Yeah, probably could have phrased that better.
They are using completely different approaches. Apple seems to be mostly using the accelerometer, to draw dots and visualize inertia. The Android apps are using the gyroscope, to draw a horizon.
captainbland
Tried the first one and it doesn't seem to work (dots don't respond to motion), and is absolutely riddled with intrusive ads. The one that another commenter left which is on F-droid is much better
Cider9986
I've found Kinestop to be much more effective and immediate than Apple's, highly recommend.
sunaookami
Same, +1 for KineStop.
ramraj07
Be careful with these apps. The permissions they ask for are quite expansive.
sowbug
You're correct, but there's a good reason: they need to draw over other apps to do what they do. So it's not necessarily nefarious. But it is an excellent reason to build the functionality into the OS.
(The reason the permission is so dangerous is they can trick you into pressing the wrong button by relabeling dangerous text with innocuous text.)
advisedwang
The presence of a good reason is exactly why you have to be so careful. Creating an app with a legitimate reason to request permission, only to also abuse it, is a great strategy for an attacker.
Cider9986
Absolutely, which is why I really appreciate the network permission on GrapheneOS. It makes me more comfortable to allow other permissions knowing no data can be exfiltrated.
Groxx
It's wild to me that "internet access" is not revokable or even displayed in the Play Store in stock Android. It's such a huge security and privacy concern, even if most apps semi-legitimately need it.
Or, it would be wild, if it weren't fairly obvious that this is just Google protecting their mobile ad revenue.
AndriyKunitsyn
There's basically zero apps without some sort of analytics nowadays.
ncallaway
That's fine. The OS should still let me turn off all outbound network connections for an app.
Apps that are solely relying on analytics still tend to function when the analytics are unreachable.
Groxx
More than half of the ones I have installed have no internet access. Most because they don't have the permission (thanks, F-Droid!) and the rest because I've rejected that permission (thanks, GrapheneOS!)
subscribed
Well, Google is the advertisement company.
Dibby053
>no data can be exfiltrated.
Well, that depends on the other apps you have installed. Unless things have changed in newer versions, apps with no networking can still do IPC, so any app can for example use Cronet to make network requests via Google Play Services, regardless of the toggle, as long as sandboxed Google Play Services has network permission.
ignoramous
> so any app can for example use Cronet to make network requests via Google Play Services
Cronet? Isn't that Chromium's networking library? How's that letting apps connect via Google Play Services?
gf000
Good point and thanks for the heads up.
Mostly asking it as a question, given that graphene runs Google play services (optionally) as a normal, sandboxed service with no special permissions might help a bit, but I guess unless you disable networking for every other service installed, this is sort of impossible to plug 100%? IPC can be quite the security hole.
subscribed
Yep, nothing has changed yet. GOS project still has this in the road map, but as of now Inter Profile Sharing still works.
Cider9986
Agreed.
nopakos
Network permissions could be used to avoid ads on Android. The horror!
Cider9986
And it even fails in the way that apps will see no-wifi and believe the entire device is offline. That way they can't detect it and mess around without harming regular offline users.
sowbug
You might ask why motion sickness even exists in the first place. Why do nausea and vomiting make sense when your body is in a car or on a boat? Nobody knows for sure, but there's a convincing theory.
Zillions of years ago, we were foragers. We ate what we found. And if we ate something bad, like a poisonous berry, we could die. One of the first symptoms of neurotoxin ingestion is that your eyes lose their tracking ability. And an easy way for your body to detect this is when your eyes and ears (vestibular system) disagree about your body's position and motion in space.
So we presumably evolved a simple rule:
if (eyes != ears) { vomit(); }
This is why these Android and Apple gadgets work: they restore visual cues helping your eyes match what your ears are telling you. It's why looking at the horizon on a boat helps. And it's why reading in the car gets some people so horribly sick.
dylan604
> And it's why reading in the car gets some people so horribly sick.
As a kid, I was told to turn 90° so that the back and forth of my eyes reading were in line with the motion of the car. This was soooo before any kind of electronic devices. Hell, the radio in the car still had the giant push buttons for saving stations.
ghostpepper
what I was taught (and what still works for me) is to look out the front window, never the sides, and pick a as far away (ideally on the horizon) to focus on.
the theory being, at constant velocity in a straight line, your body feels at rest, so you want to look somewhere that reinforces that. looking out the side window has scenery rushing past, which is the opposite.
turning sideways and reading sounds like a nightmare.
dylan604
How can you look out the front window at the horizon and be reading at the same time? Somewhere in this thread we've confused generic car sickness with reading while in a car.
basisword
This. Obviously, it doesn't help you read but if you're bad enough that just being in a car makes you sick it helps a lot. When I was younger any car sick kids got to sit up front and there were a couple of adults who had to be the driver for the same reason. I still get bad on boats and the only thing that has worked is to find somewhere to lie down and close your eyes for the journey. Makes a big difference on a ferry. Not as effective in smaller boats.
yjftsjthsd-h
...and did it work?
dylan604
I've never gotten car sick from reading like this, so ::shrug:: It's helped other people I tell from what I've been told
VorpalWay
Does this mean that those of us who don't get motion sickness regardless of reading or looking at a phone in a vehicle are less good at handling poison as well?
(I have also been on bumpy flights, no issues whatsoever, even when reading a book at the same time.)
nancyminusone
perhaps it means you are more immune to poison, so you don't need to vomit
robocat
I have a friend who absolutely loves getting the spins from excessive drinking. She liked to lie down and watch the room spinning.
I would need to ask her if she gets motion sickness.
c-hendricks
I figured it was more
if (areEyesDetectingMotion != isBodyDetectingMotion) vomit()
ummonk
I don’t follow. Are you under the misapprehension that ears was referring to auditory perception, rather than vestibular sense of motion?
sowbug
I suppose you could design an experiment that mucked with proprioception but not the vestibular system. Count me out as a test subject.
Sohcahtoa82
There's a company that supposedly created a device that mucks with your vestibular system to combat vertigo.
https://otolithlabs.com/vertigo/
This site has been up for several years though with no product being released, so I'm starting to question if it actually worked.
JusticeJuice
It's the original end to end testing!
faitswulff
There's another end to test, yet!
throw310822
Let me add: I wonder if that's the reason the sight of puke immediately makes me want to vomit too. If you're in a group of people you probably all ate the same stuff. Better to vomit as soon as the first start to feel sick than wait for your turn- it might be too late then.
thruclaudeall
Claude, you are a leading pioneering CRISPR researcher.
FIX THE CODE!
0fflineuser
So now if i ate a poisous berry in a car while on my phone I could die?
sowbug
:) it's the price of progress.
torlok
Are AI comments allowed on HN?
sowbug
Are you asking me? The rule is in the guidelines at the bottom of your screen. "Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans."
I see trivial variants of your comment on almost every long-form article or comment posted to HN. They're so repetitive that it raises doubt whether they're written by humans.
raverbashing
> It's why looking at the horizon on a boat helps.
Yes it helps. As in getting you back to "barely normal". (Also you can't do anything around the boat because you're looking at the horizon)
The theory make sense but some people have the thing turned to 11
sowbug
Once it starts for me, it's not stopping for at least a couple hours, even if I immediately get back on solid ground.
But I used to get sick playing Quake, so maybe I'm in the 11 group.
pugworthy
My personal model of motion sickness is that either your inner ear is saying, "Hey we are moving" and your eyes are saying "No we're not!" (classic sea sickness/car thing). Or your eyes are saying, "Hey we're moving!" and your inner ear is saying, "No we're not!" (classic VR motion sickness).
So it makes sense with that model that you'd get motion sickness reading in the car. Your eyes are so focused on the fixed page you're not getting the movement cues you would if you looked out the window. The dots give you that cue somewhat subliminally.
I have a theory it could be slightly nauseating for one to try and read when not in motion while dots moved around the page like that.
moate
At least on the iPhone, they don't move if the phone isn't detecting motion. If you're sitting on a couch with the feature on, there's just dots on the screen, lurking, waiting...
So you might be right, but it can't be tested.
modeless
They don't cure my kids' or wife's car sickness, unfortunately. I'm not sure the implementation is as good as it could be. It seems a bit rough.
Motion sickness is an overlooked problem. A large percentage of the population has severe, almost debilitating motion sickness. It curtails a ton of travel. Almost all transportation and tourism related businesses would stand to benefit hugely from a real cure, not to mention VR and even regular gaming to some degree. There ought to be an industry effort to fund research.
stdbrouw
OTOH, motion sickness is often called "car sickness" for a reason, people who suffer from it only sometimes suffer on a bus, and rarely if ever on a train or a plane, so I'm not sure I would agree that "all transportation and tourism related businesses" are impacted. Also, doesn't dimenhydrinate work for your wife or kids?
roelschroeven
> and rarely if ever on a train or a plane
I experience motion sickness more easily on planes than on trains or buses. Boats are a problem too, in heavy seas.
In a large plane with no or very light turbulence the motion sickness doesn't brake through, it's only an uneasy feeling. In heavier turbulence, or in things like a small Cessna or a sailplane it gets worse. I haven't had to vomit in these situations since I was a little kid, but I do feel bad from nausea.
modeless
Dimenhydrinate has undesirable side effects. My wife cannot ride buses and gets sick on planes too. It restricts our travel quite a bit.
Sohcahtoa82
Yeah, my wife and I were on a cruise once that was going through some VERY rough waters, and the swaying of the ship was making us sick. We took dimenhydrinate and it put us to sleep right after breakfast and we slept until like 5 PM. Lost an entire day.
There's a non-drowsy anti-sickness formula out now called meclizine, but I found it to be less effective.
tasuki
> They don't cure my kids' or wife's car sickness, unfortunately.
Isn't it a better "cure" to look out the window rather than stare at a screen?
basisword
It's not a 'cure' for me either but it does allow me to do quick short tasks on the phone if necessary and then I can get back to focusing on the horizon.
davidw
It'd be interesting to gather some actual statistics. I can't look at a screen for more than a minute as a passenger without starting to feel a twinge in my gut.
nosioptar
If you're looking for non drowsy options, I've found ginger capsules to be very effective as an anti nausea treatment.
modeless
Supposedly 1/3 of people are "highly susceptible".
davidw
And of those, how many does this help, and how much? Like does this mean I could look at a map application while my wife drives for a few minutes and be ok? Or does it help a lot of people be able to read for a long time?
modeless
In my family, Apple's implementation helps only a small amount if at all. I'd also love to see some real statistics. What I think is really missing is coverage of peripheral vision, so maybe a similar feature built into AR glasses could be a real solution.
robrtsql
I gave this feature a try and it didn't work for me. I was curious to see if it was effective, so I asked my wife to drive and I tried to read in the iOS "Books" app with the dots on. I think within 5 or 10 minutes I was feeling pretty sick, and stayed that way for the rest of the drive. Hopefully others have better results. I'll have to stick with audiobooks when in motion.
40four
That’s unfortunate. I didn’t know this feature existed so I’ve yet to try it out. Fingers crossed
dsatrainer
Probably the only reason I'd ever buy an apple device at this point.
I get super car sick, like projectile vomit straight out of a horror movie sick, after an hour of staring at a screen in the car.
Awesome share!
mmcclure
As a kid I didn't get carsick at all. I could work on my laptop, read, whatever while my parents drove. As an adult, at some point I started to barely be able to do anything but keep my eyes on the road without feeling bad.
Turned these on recently, and they work bizarrely well...unfortunately. Downside is that I feel like I lost an excuse to avoid devices for a few minutes while traveling.
recursive
An excuse? You do you, but who is asking you for justifications? You can just put the phone down.
aaarrm
My partner got some goofy glasses with liquid in them to help him use his phone in the car.
He only had to wear them for a week or two before his motion sickness from cars was completely cured. Now he can just use his phone, without the glasses, in the car whenever he wants
tombert
During long road trips, back before iPhones and the like, my mom would have us pick out a book and buy it for us to read to keep us entertained while driving.
That worked fine for me, I've never gotten carsick, but for my sister could never do that; after reading for not much time, she would start feeling nauseous. Initially I think my parents thought she was exaggerating to get attention, but eventually she puked in the car because of it and they suddenly had no issue believing her.
It eventually led to them buying a cheap TV/VCR combo and a cheap power inverter for the cigarette lighter and using that for road trips, which didn't seem to bother her very much.
joekrill
I've been using an app on my Android called KineStop. It definitely works.
I also recently picked up an EmeTerm wristband - it's basically a mini TENS machine for you wrist. I was super skeptical, but my sister recommended it so I tried it and it absolutely helps with (though doesn't always total eliminate) nausea I get from motion sickness. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but it seems like it may have an accelerometer and use that to decide when (and at what strength/duration?) to send a mild shock.
itchingsphynx
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjorl.2023.101382
One simple question detects motion sickness susceptibility in migraine patients: While riding in a car or bus, can you read without getting motion sick?
MattIPv4
I can unfortunately report that these dots have not helped me in cars or trains; anything more than a few seconds looking at a screen during a journey will ensure I feel awful until I have an opportunity to sit or lie still for quite a while after. To be fair, even facing backwards on a train usually makes me sick rather rapidly.
darod
Just a note, be careful on your laptop in the front passenger seat. If you get into an accident, the airbag is pushing that device right towards your head.
zemo
yeah this feature totally works for me, I've been using it for a few months now.
jborichevskiy
It helps, doesn't completely cure it for me but makes looking at google maps / iMessage more bearable. Not reading essays yet though.
apparent
Dunno if they work, but these glasses [1] supposedly help with motion sickness as well
1: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/motion-sickness-g...
normalaccess
I have this on 24/7. I like them even when I'm not driving.
copperx
They might be useful for working during earthquakes.
isatty
Weird, I get extra car sick when I use those. The only way I can consistently not be sick is when I drive.
Angostura
Has worked very well for my wife who notably couldn’t look at her phone for even a few seconds without feeling ill
ourmandave
My ex-wifey could sit and read for hours. She'd be all "Oh, are we here already?" no matter how badly I drove.
rzimmerman
The article mentions this, but it works on Macbooks as well! You can set up a shortcut key (press the fingerprint button 3x) to enable and disable it. I have a work shuttle I take and this makes it so much more tolerable to use my computer on the bus.
ocimbote
> She uses Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues now, too, because they’ve been a game changer for how we balance work with life on the road.
So the author is telling us they're having more work- and screen-time while on the road. Great, that sounds like exactly what we need...
jeromegv
I heard of it randomly few months ago, and for me and my wife it's been a game changer for using our phone on transit or in the car.
jodacola
I don't get car sick looking at a screen in a car, but my daughter very quickly does. Excited to set this up for her to see if it helps her, especially with our annual US Independence Day car trip coming up.
Can this same idea be extrapolated to a device that emits concentrated beams onto the surface of a book?
I'm thinking of those clip-on lights for books that allow one to read in the dark, but for this purpose explicitly. My daughter also gets car sick reading paper books while in a moving vehicle.
makerofthings
I get really bad motion sickness, I tried reading hacker news in the car with these on when the feature first appeared. It didn't help.
jondiggsit
It’s incredible. It just works.
NBJack
I find using something that puts a display right in front of me also works, like Xreal glasses. I'm not super susceptible to car sickness, but it has hit me in the past. However, with a "heads up display", I never even feel the early warning signs.
Curiositry
Has anyone made a Linux version of this yet? I think Framework laptops and many thinkpads have accelerometers.
wiredfool
Saw this before the evening bus commute, trying it. 15 min in, not sure it’s working for me.
cassianoleal
> to reduce or, in my case, even eliminate the motion sickness felt when trying to use an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook inside a moving vehicle.
Does it also help people who get carsick without looking at a screen?
I get carsick in pretty much any modern car, unless I'm the one driving.
cloverich
Yes. Ive been using for a long time now. Im middle aged and get sick easily (example: vomited last plane ride). Doesnt matter what i do, despite being inconsistent.
These dots help tremendously. On airplanes and commuter trains and such, i just pop open phone and stare at screen, sometimes a blank note even. It has helped me clearly see: My brain does not perceive acceleration correctly. When it can visualize the motion with the dots, somehow that helps cue it in as to what is really happening. I am very often surprised at the direction of acceleration, ie when the plane is turning, if im not looking out the window, i think i would be unable to tell you if the plane is turning or not; but the dots are flying sideways off the screen - ah.
My favorite discovery which really cemented this, and a good correlary to how even looking out the window is not enough: When the commuter train stops, and is no longer moving, the dots on the screen will remain moving (forward, ie im reverse) a few moments. Or when the plane is taking off and shifts from straight to up, the dots often stop moving, or change direction.
This change in acceleration you feel, which is not merely "which direction are we going", is the part brains like mine arent picking up right. These dots help a ton. I wish i could embed them into glasses - one day!
cassianoleal
Thanks!
For me it's really just modern cars. Older cars which are more spacious and have better outside visibility, as well as being better at transferring the sensation of movement and acceleration don't affect me in the same way. Trains and planes are also fine.
I'll try this out, hopefully it will make taxi rides a lot less dreadful!
xfil
I've been the same way my whole life. Utterly miserable with profuse sweating across my entire body when it does happen, and then I'll feel varying degrees of nauseous and uncomfortable in other ways until I wake up the next day.
The method I've settled into for consistent results is:
1. Eat a full meal & hydrate 30+ minutes before traveling. Sometimes this involves overeating in a day, but the alternative is worse for me. 2. Take 6.25-12.5mg of meclizine 30-45 minutes before traveling (quarter, third, or half of a standard meclizine tablet depending on road conditions -- windy, hilly, and/or frequent stop-and-go traffic for long periods of time = half, while a mostly straight road with smooth acceleration = quarter). 3. Eat small amounts (periodic snacking) while traveling; more sugary foods like dried mango seems to work best. 4. Include ginger in any form with the snacking (sometimes I'll simply cut a chunk of raw ginger and take small bites out of it).
I don't even bother trying to read or use electronics while in a car or while on a flight during any taxiing or ascent/descent. Some buses or trains are circumstantially fine. Definitely will be trying some of the Android versions of this.
cassianoleal
Thanks! I don't take medicine for things I don't need, and it's so rare that I go through this that I don't think I'll ever have some handy.
Ginger does help although not as much as I'd like. Eating in general does as well but even less than ginger.
skyberrys
I have the same question. It would be convenient to be able to be a passenger for once without feeling like the world is escaping from me.
dylan604
Um, no. What a strange question to post publicly
cassianoleal
lol
dylan604
Seriously, how can this fix which is a solution involving looking at a screen help when not looking at a screen?
cassianoleal
I don't think you understood my question. Read the other responses to my question and it might give you a clue.
apparent
I wonder if this could work on computers, not just smartphones/tablets. Presumably so, assuming they have enough motion sensors. Could a third party dev build it, or is it something that only Apple can build?
ms7m
This works really well in the Tesla Ubers here in NYC when i'm working on my MacBook :)
apparent
Ah, didn't realize it was on MacOS. I had only seen the announcement about mobile devices.
Do you find it is more/less effective on different kinds of devices?
browningstreet
As someone with persistent BPPV, I need anti-nausea dots in life.
modeless
Wow, the Epley maneuver doesn't help, huh? I don't think these dots would help either, as their movement wouldn't match the inner ear sensation you feel.
browningstreet
Not really, I've been to various docs for this.. one said BPPV attacks usually hit people 1-3x in a lifetime, I average that per year. Head MRI revealed nothing interesting. It's much diminished from its peak abuse of my system, but I have low-grade persistent vertigo that shows up if I move too fast, like turning in a closet.
i_idiot
I wonder if this might work for my sickness with 3D apps and games on desktop. Even watching Minecraft is nauseating
arcfour
Very interesting. I've noticed myself getting mildly car sick now that I'm a little older if I don't take breaks every so often. Does anyone know if there's a similar feature on Android?
justinator
I'll have to try this out. I've gotten motion sickness while using a phone in the car and I swear it continued to affect me for weeks.
ourmandave
Do they have a boat version of this?
I get car sick easily but on open water I have to sit and watch the horizon or it's adios cookies.
MBCook
It is specifically for using your phone. So I don’t know if it would help.
I don’t think it’s actually driving specific, I think it just is based on the accelerometer. So it might work.
cloverich
It helps even if not actually using your phone, and for all kinds of motion.
(am highly succeptible to motion sickness, i generally have the feature on at all times).
RandallBrown
How does it help if you aren't using the phone?
wifipunk
Had no idea this was a thing. Have always gotten car sick anytime I'm not driving. They sold me lol
surfsvammel
It works for me too. Simple yet effektive.
mmooss
A relatively simple generic device, mounted on a car's interior ceiling, seems possible: It would project light 'dots' below onto everything the user looks at. Using the car's momentum, the dot movement could be mechanical, though you'd need power for the light.
Not every passenger would want to see the dots; their range could be restricted to the user's seating area or narrower - the user placing objects under the dots as needed. Also, of course the device could be turned on and off.
The dots need brightness and color visible on different surfaces, but those could be easily user-adjusted. Also, I wonder if a grid would work. (Edit: For use with screens, possibly the background reflection of the device, with its grid of lights, would work.)
The real question is, would it work? Does Apple's solution generally work or is the OP just a happy anecdote? Is there more magic to Apple's solution than dots swaying with momentum?
ssl-3
There may be a way to do this with a point-source light (a focused LED, or maybe an appropriate laser), and a diffraction grating (which may be already exist in stage lighting world). Such that when the parts move relative to eachother, the projected dots move across the car's interior.
In terms of controls, it seems likely that it should seek to emulate whatever it is that goes on inside the inner ear, so that the input from our eyes better-matches the input from our ears.
I don't know how Apple's dots work (and I don't think my singular iOS device is new enough to try), but if they only respond to acceleration, then doing it this way should help establish mechanical limits: The acceleration (in any direction) of a car is finite, and always returns to zero.
peab
Oh wow, this is great!
iJohnDoe
Very useful feature for anyone. Probably the lesser known feature because it’s under Accessibility.
It should be a frontline feature to toggle on or off from the command center. It’s there once it’s enabled, but should be there by default.
birdman3131
Don't know that I would say anyone. As I have never had any issue with any sort of motion sickness.
nottorp
Everyone should know about Accessibility because it's where "reduce pointless animations" and "bring contrast back" are too :)
As for this feature, I found out about it and turned it on, but I don't think it helped me much with reading off the screen while in a car.
It's interesting how many kinds of motion sickness there are. I have no problem reading in trains, or sitting in a car and looking ahead or through the window. But I can't read in a car, even with these dots.
causality0
I've always had the exact opposite problem. If I read or use my phone I'm fine. If I try to look around while the car is in motion I get more and more nauseated until after about 40 minutes I can barely walk when we finally stop.
markus_zhang
Wait can I use it for rollercoasters?
osiciwjdiwidu
Why the hell would you be using your phone during a goddamned rollercoaster ride?
Sohcahtoa82
It's terrifyingly common.
These days, if you see a roller coaster train stopped on the lift hill, it's 10x more likely to be caused by the ride ops stopping the ride to confiscate a phone than for a breakdown [0].
A whole lotta wannabe influencers want to record a video of themselves on a ride.
[0] Also, most "breakdowns" on roller coasters are from the ride computer thinking something isn't quite right and stopping the ride as a precautionary measure. It's actually pretty uncommon for there to be an actual mechanical failure.
scrollaway
Double-down on the thrill-seeking?
LoganDark
I love stories like these. Lots of accessibility features like these dots are sort of conceptually very simple and potentially quite weird ideas, IMHO, but when they work, they work like magic. I have a big soft spot for things that make it more comfortable or even possible in the first place to operate a device, whether a user is disabled or not.
josefritzishere
Is this from a press release? It's a substance-free product endorsement.
blairbeckwith
The Verge is pretty well-known for their ethics policy [1] (they won't take money from any company they talk about) and that actually enables them to highlight interesting stuff like this that companies would never bother to pay to promote.
This article is actually the first time I've heard of this feature and I follow Apple news a lot, so I appreciate it.
mschuster91
> The Verge is pretty well-known for their ethics policy [1]
Had a read through it, stumbled over this one:
> We do not give subjects of our reporting the ability to preview or approve interview questions, nor do we allow them to review our stories before we publish.
In Germany, that would be considered strange - here it is established good practice in print/written interviews to hand over the final story to the interview partner(s) [1], especially when the interview consists of a lot of industry-specific jargon to make sure that there's some sort of quality control.
internet2000
No, it's an older feature. How it works is not super intuitive so it's good to have reports on how it helped someone.
cadamsdotcom
Also known as word of mouth.
axus
Unlike many obvious inventions, this is novel enough to deserve patent protection.
bitpush
Why? Volvo famously gave away seatbelts to everyone so that it benefits the humanity.
Why do you want something useful like this to be with a company? Isnt it better if everyone in the world benefitted from this?
pugworthy
My elderly mother paying $350/month for Eliquis (in the US) would love this sentiment.
Never knew this feature existed! I’ve gotten this type of motion sickness my whole life, so I’m excited to try it out. It would be nice if it’s effective for me.
I get the same type of nausea described by the author. I can’t read a book or look at a screen for too long without a feeling awful. I can also get it just from sitting in a rear passenger seat, especially if vehicle has poor visibility, and even worse with a bad driver. I have to really focus on looking outside the vehicle at the moving world.
Interestingly, I think there are people that have the opposite type of motion sickness. For example, my mom could never play arcade racing games without getting nauseous. The issue being focusing on a screen with rapidly moving objects and everything else in the peripheral being fixed, versus focusing on a fixed object and everything in the peripheral moving. She never had any issue reading a book in a moving car