Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness

https://www.theverge.com/tech/942854/apple-vehicle-motion-cues-review-really-work

by neilfrndes • 1 month ago

902 270 1 month ago

jodacola• 1 month ago

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.

iJohnDoe• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

Don't know that I would say anyone. As I have never had any issue with any sort of motion sickness.

nottorp• 1 month ago

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.

lucb1e9• 1 month ago

Probably the lesser known feature because it’s under Accessibility.

First thing I do on a new device is browse accessibility settings. They're among the most useful and I'm always excited for what extra features you can get if you just browse that section

For example turning off animations is somehow an accessibility thing, but it also just makes everything work instantly and you're not having to wait for animations to complete (which in the alarm app triggers a bug where it'll select the wrong hour if you didn't let it finish animating the hour dial before starting on the minute dial). Or finding out during initial browse that it can do autogenerated offline subtitles, that's a useful solution to know about when you want to watch a clip someone sent with relevant audio but can't listen to the audio

josefritzishere• 1 month ago

Is this from a press release? It's a substance-free product endorsement.

blairbeckwith• 1 month ago

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.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement

mschuster91• 1 month ago

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.

[1] https://journalistikon.de/autorisierung/

internet2000• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

Also known as word of mouth.

MattIPv4• 1 month ago

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.

arcfour• 1 month ago

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?

Angostura• 1 month ago

Has worked very well for my wife who notably couldn’t look at her phone for even a few seconds without feeling ill

ourmandave2• 1 month ago

My ex-wifey could sit and read for hours. She'd be all "Oh, are we here already?" no matter how badly I drove.

LoganDark• 1 month ago

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.

robrtsql• 1 month ago

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.

40four4• 1 month ago

That’s unfortunate. I didn’t know this feature existed so I’ve yet to try it out. Fingers crossed

jval43• 1 month ago

Same for me, when riding the bus. Really wanted it to work and tried over the course of several weeks, unfortunately it didn't help.

davidcann• 1 month ago

It works for me, but only if I hold the phone up in front of my face, basically perpendicular to the road.

kdheiwns• 1 month ago

With me, it's useless if I try to actually read something. But there are times where I just want to check my phone for 5 seconds, and that was enough to make me feel sick for the next hour. The dots help me with those quick checks.

They're also good when I'm on a bus/boat/train. I used to get sick quickly when riding any of those, but now I'm fine even with long periods. Cars are just more intense to me for some reason.

mmooss• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

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.

advisedwang2• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

This one works well. Small, simple, no ads, open source.

jerlam2• 1 month ago

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.

thejokeisonme2• 1 month ago

That's physically impossible.

ramraj07• 1 month ago

Be careful with these apps. The permissions they ask for are quite expansive.

sowbug8• 1 month ago

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.)

Cider99865• 1 month ago

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.

ascorbic• 1 month ago

KineStop at least claims to collect no user data, and has no ads: https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.urbandr...

Cider99865• 1 month ago

I've found Kinestop to be much more effective and immediate than Apple's, highly recommend.

sunaookami• 1 month ago

Same, +1 for KineStop.

captainbland• 1 month ago

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

linzhangrun• 1 month ago

I found my Xiaomi 13 (Hyper OS 3) also has this feature.

jofzar• 1 month ago

EDIT: Actually there's an enormous number of apps like this, many released very recently with similar style etc. Weird.

It's mostly just Devs copying apples feature, nothing too weird about it

kraf• 1 month ago

You may be wrong here and Apple seems to be the one copying the feature. Someone mentioned KineStop in this thread and that's been around since 2018.

LorenPechtel2• 1 month ago

Read the reviews on that first one. They seem to have gone over to the dark side.

wifipunk• 1 month ago

Had no idea this was a thing. Have always gotten car sick anytime I'm not driving. They sold me lol

40four4• 1 month ago

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

fecal_henge2• 1 month ago

Maybe for christmas you could get your mom a multi axis driving simulation rig.

xattt• 1 month ago

Any recommendations? I searched, but not sure if the results that come up are just white-boxed versions of the same thing.

madaxe_again• 1 month ago

Just get her a rally car, costs about the same and much more fun.

MBCook2• 1 month ago

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.

port112• 1 month ago

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.

nxobject• 1 month ago

At this point the Accessbility preference panes are just crammed full with tweaks and tools – good if you need them, bad for discovery!

joshschreuder• 1 month ago

You can add it as a Control Center toggle as well which is useful for quickly enabling / disabling without digging through the settings

gabeio• 1 month ago

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!

dhosek• 1 month ago

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.

40four4• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

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.

ok_dad• 1 month ago

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.

dillutedfixer• 1 month ago

I started getting nausea from FPS games around the time I got into my 30s. It was when Fallout 4 came out and I just had to play that game. So I did some research and found out about sea-bands. Theyre for morning sickness that pregnant women get. They worked wonders for my FPS nausea. I was able to play through many games after that without getting sick. Put them on about 10 mins before playing and wear them for the duration.

edit: clarity

xela79• 1 month ago

I never got past the first level of Wolfenstein back in the day

Wolfenstein FOV was way too low, something like <70, which caused that feeling sick, try to get games where you can set you FOV to 85+ and it made a world of difference. motion sickness =gone

telchior• 1 month ago

One of the other key issues (besides FOV which was mentioned) is the size of the virtual space relative to the speed your character moves at. So for example, Half Life 2 has you moving around in a lab building pretty quickly > instant nausea for me. Meanwhile running around outdoors in Skyrim might not bother you at all.

Visual complexity ups the ante. Think of walking through a grocery store with high shelves filled with a variety of products -- this can cause migraine in some people and, to a lesser extent, also affects vertigo. So you may not want to play, say, grocery store simulators (although I have no idea who actually does anyway, why are those things popular!?).

LorenPechtel2• 1 month ago

Gets me both ways--can't read in a car, can't play most FP games (shooter or not.)

With FPS I can clearly tell which ones are going to be a problem. Anything where the whole viewport moves at all rapidly is an issue, especially if it is something other than a straight scroll. But I'm fine with pretty much anything where my cursor moves within the viewport, the viewport only scrolling when I reach the limits.

JumpCrisscross2• 1 month ago

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.

King-Aaron2• 1 month ago

Yeah I have a similar issue to you. If I look at my phone screen for a few minutes on the bus, I feel like I'm going to vomit. In fact most days that I commute on the bus I feel dreadful the entire way.

Strap me into my race car on the weekend and pull G's in the corners... no problems at all.

Sit me back on the bus, I want to throw up.

The dots on the iPhone do help a little bit. I wouldn't say it cures me, but I can at least check messages on the ride without immediately feeling like death.

MichaelRo2• 1 month ago

Didn't know there's a "car sickness" strictly related to reading the phone while in transit, I knew there's those people that can barely survive riding a car but that was it.

I do get the "reading phone motion sickness" a couple of days after heavy drinking. The hangover has worn off but there's this weird after-effect which gradually fades over a few days until it completely disappears. At first I thought how the hell do I get car sickness until eventually correlated with reading the phone and having to stop or else.

Based on my manifestations being chemically-induced, wonder if that's also valid in general. Some level of Gaba or something, which is normally lower in most people, gets elevated by drinking and then (hopefully) cleared.

volkanvardar• 1 month ago

Even just checking the time on phone makes me feel sick. I'm using Apple cues from the day they released. It helps, but I still cannot respond to Whatsapp messages. I envy people who can use their phones, laptops during a ride.

40four4• 1 month ago

Exactly. It seems to me it has to do with some sort of weird disconnect in our brains of feeling the motion of the vehicle, and what we are visually seeing with our eyes.

This is why I prefer to be in the driver seat at all times if possible. If you’re driving you’re in full control of everything & you’re intensely focused on all the surroundings. Absolutely zero motion sickness for me.

Front passenger seat of a four-door vehicle, you’re still pretty focused on you’re surroundings, but you have no control so unexpected movements can trigger this or looking at your phone/book/magazine or whatever intensifies the effect.

Sitting in the backseat is even worse, much more limited visibility. Sitting in the back of the bus like you said? Way worse, add to the fact that bus drivers tend to be pretty crappy, game over! Public buses absolutely destroy me as well. The only thing I can recommend is to stare outside the window and focus on things in the distance as much as possible.

orangepanda• 1 month ago

The dots do help a little, but not much. I wouldnt use my phone for long while in a vehicle, though at the very least I no longer dread having to briefly read a text message if I have to.

I found your note on bad drivers interesting. For me, it's the quick acceleration, braking and turning that's the worst. A bit anecdotal, but I also experience car sickness less with women drivers. Maybe because they're usually easier on the acceleration and brakes?

jborichevskiy• 1 month ago

It helps, doesn't completely cure it for me but makes looking at google maps / iMessage more bearable. Not reading essays yet though.

makerofthings• 1 month ago

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.

cassianoleal5• 1 month ago

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.

dylan6045• 1 month ago

Um, no. What a strange question to post publicly

cassianoleal5• 1 month ago

lol

skyberrys• 1 month ago

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.

cloverich3• 1 month ago

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!

cassianoleal5• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

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.

cassianoleal5• 1 month ago

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.

lucb1e9• 1 month ago

Not sure if the word 'modern' is meant to carry meaning there. Did/do you not get sick in non-modern cars? I could imagine less good soundproofing giving your brain extra clues or so but it seems odd. Are non-cars an issue (bus/train)?

markus_zhang2• 1 month ago

Wait can I use it for rollercoasters?

osiciwjdiwidu• 1 month ago

Why the hell would you be using your phone during a goddamned rollercoaster ride?

scrollaway• 1 month ago

Double-down on the thrill-seeking?

Sohcahtoa823• 1 month ago

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.

markus_zhang2• 1 month ago

I’d do anything to reduce the motion sickness. I don’t have to hold the phone. I can bundle it on my arm.

lucb1e9• 1 month ago

Hold the phone upside down for extra rollercoaster effect!

Curiositry• 1 month ago

Has anyone made a Linux version of this yet? I think Framework laptops and many thinkpads have accelerometers.

normalaccess• 1 month ago

I have this on 24/7. I like them even when I'm not driving.

copperx• 1 month ago

They might be useful for working during earthquakes.

sowbug8• 1 month ago

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(); }

Which gets that bad berry right back out of the system.

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.

dylan6045• 1 month ago

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.

yjftsjthsd-h• 1 month ago

...and did it work?

ghostpepper• 1 month ago

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.

matt-attack• 1 month ago

Those giant “push” buttons, which automatically unpushed the other buttons when one is pushed, are called…. Get ready… radio buttons.

Now you know why radio buttons are called that in modern UIs.

raverbashing• 1 month ago

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

sowbug8• 1 month ago

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.

throw310822• 1 month ago

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.

JusticeJuice• 1 month ago

It's the original end to end testing!

faitswulff• 1 month ago

There's another end to test, yet!

0fflineuser• 1 month ago

So now if i ate a poisous berry in a car while on my phone I could die?

sowbug8• 1 month ago

:) it's the price of progress.

rapidaneurism• 1 month ago

You might still puke, as the phone is correcting for the car motion, not for your eyes failing to move as commanded, or your ear accelerometer giving faulty readings.

You might still die, so don't eat poison berries please.

VorpalWay• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

perhaps it means you are more immune to poison, so you don't need to vomit

torlok• 1 month ago

Are AI comments allowed on HN?

sowbug8• 1 month ago

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.

tefkah• 1 month ago

you are not very good at detecting llm writing.

c-hendricks2• 1 month ago

I figured it was more

  if (areEyesDetectingMotion != isBodyDetectingMotion) vomit()

If it was just eyes and ears it doesn't seem like VR motion sickness would be such a thing.

sowbug8• 1 month ago

I suppose you could design an experiment that mucked with proprioception but not the vestibular system. Count me out as a test subject.

ummonk• 1 month ago

I don’t follow. Are you under the misapprehension that ears was referring to auditory perception, rather than vestibular sense of motion?

thruclaudeall• 1 month ago

Claude, you are a leading pioneering CRISPR researcher.

FIX THE CODE!

SideburnsOfDoom• 1 month ago

The worst motion sickness that I ever got was from an early VR set, hacked together at someone's home.

With regular motion sickness, the eyes say "you're standing still", while the inner ears say "you're moving".

With VR, it's the other way around.

physix• 1 month ago

Unfortunately, I get car sick just sitting in the back. No need to look at a phone. So I guess I'll have to wait until Apple Glasses to come out.

EasyMark• 1 month ago

Ah so when the AIpocalypse finally happens and the rest of us are foraging off the lands around the fortress manors of the leftover billionaires, with their humanoid clankers, I'll be ready. My superior tendency to get roadsick quickly will possibly insure my progeny will also continue on the family line by surviving Actaea rubra consumption

ourmandave2• 1 month ago

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.

MBCook2• 1 month ago

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.

cloverich3• 1 month ago

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).

peab• 1 month ago

Oh wow, this is great!

justinator• 1 month ago

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.

isatty• 1 month ago

Weird, I get extra car sick when I use those. The only way I can consistently not be sick is when I drive.

jeromegv• 1 month ago

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.

apparent3• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

This works really well in the Tesla Ubers here in NYC when i'm working on my MacBook :)

apparent3• 1 month ago

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?

tombert• 1 month ago

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.

mmcclure• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

An excuse? You do you, but who is asking you for justifications? You can just put the phone down.

Rendello• 1 month ago

I had a few years (from 9-12, maybe) where I became carsick very easily, otherwise it hasn't been an issue for me*. In that same time period, I was extremely sensitive to the harsh florescent lights in my classroom, and had to read through a coloured plastic sheet and try my best to cover everything in shadow.

Remembering things like that makes you really thankful when they've just went away. Things do sometimes get better through for no clear reason!

* Except "simulation sickness" from certain 3D games like Minecraft.

apparent3• 1 month ago

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...

NBJack• 1 month ago

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.

aaarrm• 1 month ago

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

jimt12342• 1 month ago

Are you talking about these bad boys: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQG99L4J ?

I suffer from motion sickness. It sucks. I'll try anything. If those goofy glasses work, I'll wear them.

buzzy_hacker• 1 month ago

My wife has terrible motion sickness in cars (just riding, reading is out of the question) and these glasses help a lot.

modeless5• 1 month ago

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.

davidw2• 1 month ago

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.

modeless5• 1 month ago

Supposedly 1/3 of people are "highly susceptible".

nosioptar• 1 month ago

If you're looking for non drowsy options, I've found ginger capsules to be very effective as an anti nausea treatment.

stdbrouw• 1 month ago

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?

modeless5• 1 month ago

Dimenhydrinate has undesirable side effects. My wife cannot ride buses and gets sick on planes too. It restricts our travel quite a bit.

roelschroeven• 1 month ago

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.

sergeykish• 1 month ago

Nausea is from Latin "seasickness", known for thousands years.

From my experience bus was the worst as you can't get front seat, even worse were backward positioned seats. Train and plane were great. Car in the middle, depend on road and driving style.

If I was on bus during childhood you would know by stops it made. We avoided that by traveling by car.

basisword2• 1 month ago

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.

tasuki• 1 month ago

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?

axus• 1 month ago

Unlike many obvious inventions, this is novel enough to deserve patent protection.

bitpush• 1 month ago

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?

pugworthy2• 1 month ago

My elderly mother paying $350/month for Eliquis (in the US) would love this sentiment.

pfdietz2• 1 month ago

Observation is not advocacy.

ocimbote• 1 month ago

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...

NetMageSCW4• 1 month ago

That is exactly what passengers need so they can get work done during dead time and have more fun time available.

i_idiot• 1 month ago

I wonder if this might work for my sickness with 3D apps and games on desktop. Even watching Minecraft is nauseating

NetMageSCW4• 1 month ago

No, that is the opposite issue.

rzimmerman• 1 month ago

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.

taejavu• 1 month ago

What's the setting called? I haven't been able to find it. Is it only on Tahoe or something?

ludwigvan• 1 month ago

Accessibility -> Motion -> Vehicle Motion Cues.

This is on Tahoe, not sure about earlier versions.

causality02• 1 month ago

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.

pfdietz2• 1 month ago

Do you have poor balance? If your vestibular system is not reporting properly then a disconnect between eyes and its output could cause problems when you are looking around.

causality02• 1 month ago

I'd say my balance is good. I'm no gymnast, but my coordination is generally excellent. I bump into things, drop things, and lose my balance much less often than most of the people I know.

surfsvammel• 1 month ago

It works for me too. Simple yet effektive.

wiredfool• 1 month ago

Saw this before the evening bus commute, trying it. 15 min in, not sure it’s working for me.

browningstreet2• 1 month ago

As someone with persistent BPPV, I need anti-nausea dots in life.

modeless5• 1 month ago

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.

browningstreet2• 1 month ago

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.

joekrill• 1 month ago

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.

jondiggsit• 1 month ago

It’s incredible. It just works.

itchingsphynx• 1 month ago

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?

darod• 1 month ago

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.

pugworthy2• 1 month ago

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• 1 month ago

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.

zemo• 1 month ago

yeah this feature totally works for me, I've been using it for a few months now.

dsatrainer• 1 month ago

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!

himata41133• 1 month ago

Pro tip: apple airpods pro 3's somehow solve car sickness for me. No other noise cancelling product has ever had anything similar.

whycome2• 1 month ago

Maybe not even related to the noise cancelling but to do with air pressure or something with the inner ear? Do ear plugs work?

himata41133• 1 month ago

No, but it might be related to the fact that they have an exceptional seal and are the only things to actually stay in my ear. They do appear to also create additional pressure inside the ear especially in loud environments so might be related.

chalmovsky• 1 month ago

yeah this feature works for me and its amazing! BUT one interesting caveat - it doesnt work when im in an electric car

hex4def6• 1 month ago

In VR, it's well known that your peripheral vision is a cue to your brain to infer motion direction.

You can give yourself serious motion sickness in VR if you grab hold of the VR camera and force a roll / pitch in this state.

One of the things some games do is during motion create "tunnel vision" when you move, shrinking down the size of the video feed and putting a black border around it. This significantly reduces this unpleasant effect. I assume the high resolution portion of your eyeball isn't used for motion inference, which makes sense.

I'm thinking this feature is exploiting this same peripheral vision cue.

Kyselica• 1 month ago

The peripheral receptive fields in the eyes are much bigger than the ones in the center of vision. The smaller center fields are better for detail due to their resolution, while the off center fields are indeed tuned for motion.

Using tunnel vision to blunt motion detection is a clever way to reduce VR motion sickness. It never clicked for me why VR games did that until you brought it up

bmitc• 1 month ago

Weird title and article. Isn't that article the point of that feature? "Feature meant to do <x> did <x>. This and more later."

makeitdouble• 1 month ago

"Feature touted to do <x> actually did <x> for me" is newsworthy.

We're out from WWDC and a ton of marketing claims and PR has been thrown around. Taking any company's claim for granted would be foolish, and it is truly welcomed that they did try the feature and found some basis to the claims. I wish we had more of those.

kazinator2• 1 month ago

I'm skeptical that this kind of tech can fully counteract serious motion sickness, like many hours or days on a boat.

From personal experience, I know that even if you go out onto the deck and look out on the ocean, so that you have a visual reference to the horizon, it doesn't help.

You can look out of the window of the car and still get motion sickness; it doesn't only happen to people who are engaged with something inside the vehicle.

The external visual reference doesn't entirely help the fact that your body is experiencing accelerations not of its own accord.

The leading hypothesis on motion sickness is that your brain interprets the mismatched motion sensations as being caused by a poison acting on your brain, and triggers a response to empty your stomach contents and make you averse to more ingestion.

This mechanism is not easily defeated by visual tricks. If they can slow the onset and reduce the severity, that is welcome, of course.

BTW, has anyone here tried the motion sickness glasses? This is an object which has a hollow rim, partially filled with colored fluid. The glass rims, as well as additional circles placed laterally near the temples, act as "semicircular canals": the fluid moves to provide a kind of horizon reference.

decimalenough• 1 month ago

The apps are targeted at a very specific but common use case: being unable to read while in a moving vehicle. It's not going to help you if you're on a sailboat in heavy seas for a day.

MomsAVoxell2• 1 month ago

I dunno, I was wondering about this .. if maybe there were a projector on the mast or from a cabin-ceiling mounted project, which always gave a local physical reference to the Earth, no matter the condition of the boat on the sea, it might kind of produce the same effect - albeit instead of applying dots to the screen, its dots to the hull. I really wonder if a polka-dot locator would be effective in addressing sea sickness..

GreenSalem• 1 month ago

Android version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.com.wiisoft...

HDBaseT• 1 month ago

I don't see how "car sickness" is real.

felixding• 1 month ago

Anything similar for Windows users? My wife is suffering from car sickness as she works on taxi a lot.

qnleigh• 1 month ago

What is the origin of this trick? It seems like the kind of thing that might have been discovered in academia but overlooked for years.

anitil2• 1 month ago

I wish I could cure my sea sickness. The only thing that's worked is being on a boat more often (which isn't possible for me at the moment), and getting more sleep. The anti-nausea tablets unfortunately put me to sleep and they don't feel very safe in terms of driving to/from the boat

turbocon• 1 month ago

Meclizine OTC is non-drowsy and works really well for my wife.

anitil2• 1 month ago

I'll give it a go thankyou!

jimt12342• 1 month ago

The popular OTC for meclizine is Bonine. Many friends report positive results from it, but it doesn't do anything for me. My options are Dramamine (deep sleep) or nothing (headache and vomit).

I've heard of people mixing Dramamine with a ton of caffeine, but I've been too scared to try it, like I might have a heart attack from all the caffeine. Actually, I heard Kevin Bacon suffers from motion sickness, and that's what he did to get through filming the 0-gravity scenes in Apollo 13. Or something like that.

Unit327• 1 month ago

I can just see the meeting where the apple developers pitched this. "Some of our users want to stare at their black rectangles for 18 hours a day but unfortunately have to take a break and stare out of the window because of motion sickness. How can we help them in order to drive up usage even more?"

There's probably a meeting going on somewhere inside google/apple right now to work out how to cure humans of the need for sleep.

jbverschoor• 1 month ago

I run it for about a year, because it’s more festive. Especially during the holidays

globular-toast• 1 month ago

I've installed one of the free Android ones and will try it if I remember. As an adult I don't get driven around very often any more, so it's easy to forget I get motion sickness. So far I've got it from cars, buses and boats, but never trains or aeroplanes. I've noticed I'm far more susceptible to it when I'm tired and/or hungry (which probably means low blood sugar or something), to the extent that even the best driver in the world will make me sick in such a state.

virgildotcodes2• 1 month ago

I had motion sickness for the first ~38 years of my life, and had it cured.

Posting here because I went the majority of my life without knowing that such a treatment existed.

About a year ago I flew to the University of North Dakota and spent an hour a day over 3 days sitting in a simulator that would spin faster and faster while the facilitator talked to me over the headset and kept me distracted.

Was nowhere near as bad as I'd feared, honestly maybe a 3/10 on the discomfort/nausea scale.

Ever since then, motion sickness completely gone. I used to despise boats, calling them mankind's cruelest invention. Taken many flights, reading car trips, hot humid boat rides in rough seas in southeast asia since and... nothing.

Would 100% recommend. I think you can find the program at the bottom of this page, it's $400:

https://www.aerospacephysiology.com/

specialjack• 1 month ago

Wow That’s amazing, how bad was your motion sickness before you went? This would be life changing for me, I have to take dimenhydrinate when I fly or else I’ll get nauseous to the point of vomiting.

virgildotcodes2• 1 month ago

Mine was not that severe. I would get mildly nauseous during normal commercial airplane turbulence, although very nauseous in small planes and the worst nausea of my life after a glider session, very seasick to the point of being debilitated, and then probably a 6 or 7 out of 10 when reading in the car for more than a few minutes.

Definitely worth a shot IMO.

cronin101• 1 month ago

Off topic (but helpfully hopeful to someone!): In the rare cases where I get motion sick I can usually "hack" my way out of it by closing my eyes and imagining myself skiing down a mountain avoiding obstacles in an erratic path that matches the patterns of motion I'm feeling (calculated JIT).

Presumably you have to have a lot of experience skiing for this to work, but there are probably isomorphic activities (weaving around a crowd? Playing dodgeball?) that can hack your brain in a similar way.

pflenker• 1 month ago

This doesn't work for everyone, for example, if I get motion sick, closing my eyes makes it far worse, almost immediately.

DamnInteresting• 1 month ago

I prefer to toggle the dots to avoid seeing them when I’m driving the car.

Please do not look at your phone screen while driving the car.

eszed2• 1 month ago

Is navigation a legitimate use of a phone screen while driving? I wouldn't want the dots on my map, so I'll charitably assume that's what GP meant.

bicepjai• 1 month ago

I have this problem and I did not know about this feature. thanks for sharing.

madh• 1 month ago

I love this feature.

aubanel• 1 month ago

Gotta love how Apple cares (or used to care) about making their products a holistically good user experience

dyl000• 1 month ago

They’ve been a lifesaver for me in the back of Ubers

coatmatter• 1 month ago

Buy a CO2 monitor and note the difference between the car's air conditioner on recirculate mode vs fresh air. Also try the same thing in places such as buses and planes. Think also about what happens with all that shared "stale" air for hours.

Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness

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