11 ms·

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

902 points by neilfrndes 4mo ago

darod 4mo 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.
wifipunk 4mo ago
Had no idea this was a thing. Have always gotten car sick anytime I'm not driving. They sold me lol
jodacola 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
  Don't know that I would say anyone. As I have never had any issue with any sort of motion sickness.
- nottorp 4mo 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.
- lucb1e 4mo 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 4mo ago
Is this from a press release? It's a substance-free product endorsement.
- blairbeckwith 4mo 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 https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
  - mschuster91 4mo 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/ https://journalistikon.de/autorisierung/
- internet2000 4mo 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 4mo ago
  Also known as word of mouth.
MattIPv4 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
Has worked very well for my wife who notably couldn’t look at her phone for even a few seconds without feeling ill
- ourmandave 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
- 40four 4mo ago
  That’s unfortunate. I didn’t know this feature existed so I’ve yet to try it out. Fingers crossed
- jval43 4mo 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 4mo ago
  It works for me, but only if I hold the phone up in front of my face, basically perpendicular to the road.
- kdheiwns 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
advisedwang 4mo ago
Seems like there's a few android equivalents: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.motioncure&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.mo... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.kinestop 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.a100hz&hl=en_US 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 4mo 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/ 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 4mo ago
    This one works well. Small, simple, no ads, open source.
    - IshKebab 4mo ago
      It does have weird jumps if you tilt your phone though. Something's not quite right with its algorithm.
- jerlam 4mo ago
  It's been rumored that Google would build it into Android for years: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-motion-cues-pixels-new-name-apk-teardown-3623023/ 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 4mo ago
40four 4mo 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_henge 4mo ago
  Maybe for christmas you could get your mom a multi axis driving simulation rig.
  - xattt 4mo ago
    Any recommendations? I searched, but not sure if the results that come up are just white-boxed versions of the same thing.
    - throw2ih020 4mo ago
      I believe the commenter was being facetious; these are typically professional equipment for racing teams or eccentric multimillionaires. I've done actual motorsport for less than one of these rigs cost.
      - fecal_henge 4mo ago
        Eccentric, how dare you?
  - madaxe_again 4mo ago
    Just get her a rally car, costs about the same and much more fun.
jborichevskiy 4mo 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 4mo 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.
cassianoleal 4mo 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.
- dylan604 4mo ago
  Um, no. What a strange question to post publicly
  - cassianoleal 4mo ago
    lol
    - dylan604 4mo ago
      Seriously, how can this fix which is a solution involving looking at a screen help when not looking at a screen?
      - cassianoleal 4mo ago
        I don't think you understood my question. Read the other responses to my question and it might give you a clue.
- skyberrys 4mo 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.
- cloverich 4mo 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!
markus_zhang 4mo ago
Wait can I use it for rollercoasters?
- osiciwjdiwidu 4mo ago
  Why the hell would you be using your phone during a goddamned rollercoaster ride?
  - scrollaway 4mo ago
    Double-down on the thrill-seeking?
  - Sohcahtoa82 4mo 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_zhang 4mo 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.
    - NetMageSCW 4mo ago
      I don’t get car sick (or small plane sick, haven’t ridden a big plane in decades or a train ever) and I don’t get roller coaster sick. However, I can only ride one of those small fair rides that go in a circle or I will get sick.
  - lucb1e 4mo ago
    Hold the phone upside down for extra rollercoaster effect!
Curiositry 4mo ago
Has anyone made a Linux version of this yet? I think Framework laptops and many thinkpads have accelerometers.
normalaccess 4mo ago
I have this on 24/7. I like them even when I'm not driving.
- copperx 4mo ago
  They might be useful for working during earthquakes.
sowbug 4mo 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.
- dylan604 4mo 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 4mo ago
    ...and did it work?
    - dylan604 4mo ago
      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
  - ghostpepper 4mo 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.
ourmandave 4mo 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.
- MBCook 4mo 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.
  - cloverich 4mo 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).
    - RandallBrown 4mo ago
      How does it help if you aren't using the phone?
      - cloverich 4mo ago
        Getting sick from eg reading while driving is what it intends to protect. But you can use it without really using your phone, like staring at a blank screen, ie not "using" your phone in the typical sense. For people that get sick from motion more generally, as opposed to sick while reading and moving, which is far more common.
peab 4mo ago
Oh wow, this is great!
justinator 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
apparent 4mo 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 4mo ago
  This works really well in the Tesla Ubers here in NYC when i'm working on my MacBook :)
  - apparent 4mo 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?
    - gsnedders 4mo ago
      It came in macOS Tahoe 26 — a year later than on iOS and iPadOS. Personally, I find it somewhat less effective on larger screens, simply because my eyes are more likely to be further from the dots.
tombert 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
  An excuse? You do you, but who is asking you for justifications? You can just put the phone down.
- Rendello 4mo 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.
apparent 4mo 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-glasses-review/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/motion-sickness-g...
NBJack 4mo 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 4mo 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
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- jimt1234 4mo ago
  Are you talking about these bad boys: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQG99L4J 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 4mo ago
    My wife has terrible motion sickness in cars (just riding, reading is out of the question) and these glasses help a lot.
modeless 4mo 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.
- davidw 4mo 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.
  - modeless 4mo ago
    Supposedly 1/3 of people are "highly susceptible".
    - davidw 4mo ago
      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 4mo ago
        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.
  - nosioptar 4mo ago
    If you're looking for non drowsy options, I've found ginger capsules to be very effective as an anti nausea treatment.
axus 4mo ago
Unlike many obvious inventions, this is novel enough to deserve patent protection.
- bitpush 4mo 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?
  - pugworthy 4mo ago
    My elderly mother paying $350/month for Eliquis (in the US) would love this sentiment.
  - pfdietz 4mo ago
    Observation is not advocacy.
wiredfool 4mo ago
Saw this before the evening bus commute, trying it. 15 min in, not sure it’s working for me.
ocimbote 4mo 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...
- NetMageSCW 4mo ago
  That is exactly what passengers need so they can get work done during dead time and have more fun time available.
i_idiot 4mo ago
I wonder if this might work for my sickness with 3D apps and games on desktop. Even watching Minecraft is nauseating
- NetMageSCW 4mo ago
  No, that is the opposite issue.
rzimmerman 4mo 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 4mo ago
  What's the setting called? I haven't been able to find it. Is it only on Tahoe or something?
  - ludwigvan 4mo ago
    Accessibility -> Motion -> Vehicle Motion Cues. This is on Tahoe, not sure about earlier versions.
causality0 4mo 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.
- pfdietz 4mo 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.
  - causality0 3mo 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 4mo ago
It works for me too. Simple yet effektive.
browningstreet 4mo ago
As someone with persistent BPPV, I need anti-nausea dots in life.
- modeless 4mo 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.
  - browningstreet 4mo 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.
deleted 4mo ago
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joekrill 4mo 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 4mo ago
It’s incredible. It just works.
itchingsphynx 4mo ago
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjorl.2023.101382 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?
pugworthy 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
yeah this feature totally works for me, I've been using it for a few months now.
dsatrainer 4mo 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!
himata4113 4mo ago
Pro tip: apple airpods pro 3's somehow solve car sickness for me. No other noise cancelling product has ever had anything similar.
- whycome 4mo 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?
  - himata4113 4mo 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.
    - ziml77 4mo ago
      Interesting because I have foam tips on my Pro 2s and sometimes the pressure from the noise cancellation will actually make me feel worse.
      - himata4113 4mo ago
        the pro 3's noise cancelling is in a league of its own, so might be related to faster response time, not sure.
    - whycome 4mo ago
      maybe its not that they have a perfect seal, but that they slow the pressure change so your ears adapt better? I think there are actually airplane earplugs that are meant to basically seal but have a tiny hole in them.
chalmovsky 4mo ago
yeah this feature works for me and its amazing! BUT one interesting caveat - it doesnt work when im in an electric car
hex4def6 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.
kazinator 4mo 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 4mo 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.
  - MomsAVoxell 4mo 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..
    - kazinator 4mo ago
      You can get sea sick while outside on an upper deck. Or even if you're looking out of the window of the land vehicle you're riding. As a kid, I got nausea on ~2h bus trips, even though I looked out the window. If you don't look out the window, the onset may be quicker and stronger, so there may be some mitigating effect. Your best bet is medications, though. Funny story. This year I went to Ogasawara ("Bonin Islands"): 24 hours by boat. The sea was rough on the way there. Pretty strong winds which added several hours to the time. I puked like 20 times, the last 17 of those on completely empty stomach contents or just water. On the way back I took the Japanese anti-nausea cocktail known as Aneron which contains four drugs, none of which are available in Canada over the counter. The instructions warn against combining with other meds. I disregarded that and also took Gravol for good measure. I slept almost the entire 24 hours (except for waking up once to reload on the shorter-acting Gravol), and walked like a zombie after alighting in Tokyo. My heart rate was down to 40 (and I was not in good aerobic shape, though getting there now).
GreenSalem 4mo ago
Android version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.com.wiisoft.cartip&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.com.wiisoft...
HDBaseT 4mo ago
I don't see how "car sickness" is real.
felixding 4mo ago
Anything similar for Windows users? My wife is suffering from car sickness as she works on taxi a lot.
qnleigh 4mo 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.
anitil 4mo 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 4mo ago
  Meclizine OTC is non-drowsy and works really well for my wife.
  - anitil 4mo ago
    I'll give it a go thankyou!
  - jimt1234 4mo 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 4mo 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.
qotgalaxy 4mo ago
[dead]
jbverschoor 4mo ago
I run it for about a year, because it’s more festive. Especially during the holidays
globular-toast 4mo 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.
virgildotcodes 4mo 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/ https://www.aerospacephysiology.com/
- specialjack 4mo 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.
  - virgildotcodes 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
  This doesn't work for everyone, for example, if I get motion sick, closing my eyes makes it far worse, almost immediately.
DamnInteresting 4mo 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.
- eszed 4mo 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 4mo ago
I have this problem and I did not know about this feature. thanks for sharing.
madh 4mo ago
I love this feature.
aubanel 4mo ago
Gotta love how Apple cares (or used to care) about making their products a holistically good user experience
dyl000 4mo ago
They’ve been a lifesaver for me in the back of Ubers
coatmatter 4mo 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.

902 points by neilfrndes 4mo ago

darod 4mo 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.

wifipunk 4mo ago

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

jodacola 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
Don't know that I would say anyone. As I have never had any issue with any sort of motion sickness.
nottorp 4mo 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.
lucb1e 4mo 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 4mo ago

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

blairbeckwith 4mo 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 https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
- mschuster91 4mo 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/ https://journalistikon.de/autorisierung/
internet2000 4mo 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 4mo ago
Also known as word of mouth.

MattIPv4 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago

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

ourmandave 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.

40four 4mo ago
That’s unfortunate. I didn’t know this feature existed so I’ve yet to try it out. Fingers crossed
jval43 4mo 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 4mo ago
It works for me, but only if I hold the phone up in front of my face, basically perpendicular to the road.
kdheiwns 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.

advisedwang 4mo ago

Seems like there's a few android equivalents: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.motioncure&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panshen.mo... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.kinestop 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.a100hz&hl=en_US 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 4mo 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/ 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 4mo ago
  This one works well. Small, simple, no ads, open source.
  - IshKebab 4mo ago
    It does have weird jumps if you tilt your phone though. Something's not quite right with its algorithm.
jerlam 4mo ago
It's been rumored that Google would build it into Android for years: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-motion-cues-pixels-new-name-apk-teardown-3623023/ 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 4mo ago

40four 4mo 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_henge 4mo ago
Maybe for christmas you could get your mom a multi axis driving simulation rig.
- xattt 4mo ago
  Any recommendations? I searched, but not sure if the results that come up are just white-boxed versions of the same thing.
  - throw2ih020 4mo ago
    I believe the commenter was being facetious; these are typically professional equipment for racing teams or eccentric multimillionaires. I've done actual motorsport for less than one of these rigs cost.
    - fecal_henge 4mo ago
      Eccentric, how dare you?
- madaxe_again 4mo ago
  Just get her a rally car, costs about the same and much more fun.

jborichevskiy 4mo 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 4mo 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.

cassianoleal 4mo 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.

dylan604 4mo ago
Um, no. What a strange question to post publicly
- cassianoleal 4mo ago
  lol
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    Seriously, how can this fix which is a solution involving looking at a screen help when not looking at a screen?
    - cassianoleal 4mo ago
      I don't think you understood my question. Read the other responses to my question and it might give you a clue.
skyberrys 4mo 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.
cloverich 4mo 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!

markus_zhang 4mo ago

Wait can I use it for rollercoasters?

osiciwjdiwidu 4mo ago
Why the hell would you be using your phone during a goddamned rollercoaster ride?
- scrollaway 4mo ago
  Double-down on the thrill-seeking?
- Sohcahtoa82 4mo 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_zhang 4mo 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.
  - NetMageSCW 4mo ago
    I don’t get car sick (or small plane sick, haven’t ridden a big plane in decades or a train ever) and I don’t get roller coaster sick. However, I can only ride one of those small fair rides that go in a circle or I will get sick.
- lucb1e 4mo ago
  Hold the phone upside down for extra rollercoaster effect!

Curiositry 4mo ago

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

normalaccess 4mo ago

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

copperx 4mo ago
They might be useful for working during earthquakes.

sowbug 4mo 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.

dylan604 4mo 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 4mo ago
  ...and did it work?
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    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
- ghostpepper 4mo 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.

ourmandave 4mo 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.

MBCook 4mo 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.
- cloverich 4mo 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).
  - RandallBrown 4mo ago
    How does it help if you aren't using the phone?
    - cloverich 4mo ago
      Getting sick from eg reading while driving is what it intends to protect. But you can use it without really using your phone, like staring at a blank screen, ie not "using" your phone in the typical sense. For people that get sick from motion more generally, as opposed to sick while reading and moving, which is far more common.

peab 4mo ago

Oh wow, this is great!

justinator 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.

apparent 4mo 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 4mo ago
This works really well in the Tesla Ubers here in NYC when i'm working on my MacBook :)
- apparent 4mo 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?
  - gsnedders 4mo ago
    It came in macOS Tahoe 26 — a year later than on iOS and iPadOS. Personally, I find it somewhat less effective on larger screens, simply because my eyes are more likely to be further from the dots.

tombert 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
An excuse? You do you, but who is asking you for justifications? You can just put the phone down.
Rendello 4mo 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.

apparent 4mo 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-glasses-review/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/motion-sickness-g...

NBJack 4mo 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 4mo 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

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
jimt1234 4mo ago
Are you talking about these bad boys: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQG99L4J 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 4mo ago
  My wife has terrible motion sickness in cars (just riding, reading is out of the question) and these glasses help a lot.

modeless 4mo 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.

davidw 4mo 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.
- modeless 4mo ago
  Supposedly 1/3 of people are "highly susceptible".
  - davidw 4mo ago
    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 4mo ago
      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.
- nosioptar 4mo ago
  If you're looking for non drowsy options, I've found ginger capsules to be very effective as an anti nausea treatment.

axus 4mo ago

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

bitpush 4mo 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?
- pugworthy 4mo ago
  My elderly mother paying $350/month for Eliquis (in the US) would love this sentiment.
- pfdietz 4mo ago
  Observation is not advocacy.

wiredfool 4mo ago

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

ocimbote 4mo 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...

NetMageSCW 4mo ago
That is exactly what passengers need so they can get work done during dead time and have more fun time available.

i_idiot 4mo ago

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

NetMageSCW 4mo ago
No, that is the opposite issue.

rzimmerman 4mo 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 4mo ago
What's the setting called? I haven't been able to find it. Is it only on Tahoe or something?
- ludwigvan 4mo ago
  Accessibility -> Motion -> Vehicle Motion Cues. This is on Tahoe, not sure about earlier versions.

causality0 4mo 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.

pfdietz 4mo 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.
- causality0 3mo 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 4mo ago

It works for me too. Simple yet effektive.

browningstreet 4mo ago

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

modeless 4mo 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.
- browningstreet 4mo 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.

deleted 4mo ago

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joekrill 4mo 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 4mo ago

It’s incredible. It just works.

itchingsphynx 4mo ago

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjorl.2023.101382 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?

pugworthy 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago

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

dsatrainer 4mo 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!

himata4113 4mo ago

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

whycome 4mo 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?
- himata4113 4mo 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.
  - ziml77 4mo ago
    Interesting because I have foam tips on my Pro 2s and sometimes the pressure from the noise cancellation will actually make me feel worse.
    - himata4113 4mo ago
      the pro 3's noise cancelling is in a league of its own, so might be related to faster response time, not sure.
  - whycome 4mo ago
    maybe its not that they have a perfect seal, but that they slow the pressure change so your ears adapt better? I think there are actually airplane earplugs that are meant to basically seal but have a tiny hole in them.

chalmovsky 4mo ago

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

hex4def6 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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.

kazinator 4mo 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 4mo 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.
- MomsAVoxell 4mo 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..
  - kazinator 4mo ago
    You can get sea sick while outside on an upper deck. Or even if you're looking out of the window of the land vehicle you're riding. As a kid, I got nausea on ~2h bus trips, even though I looked out the window. If you don't look out the window, the onset may be quicker and stronger, so there may be some mitigating effect. Your best bet is medications, though. Funny story. This year I went to Ogasawara ("Bonin Islands"): 24 hours by boat. The sea was rough on the way there. Pretty strong winds which added several hours to the time. I puked like 20 times, the last 17 of those on completely empty stomach contents or just water. On the way back I took the Japanese anti-nausea cocktail known as Aneron which contains four drugs, none of which are available in Canada over the counter. The instructions warn against combining with other meds. I disregarded that and also took Gravol for good measure. I slept almost the entire 24 hours (except for waking up once to reload on the shorter-acting Gravol), and walked like a zombie after alighting in Tokyo. My heart rate was down to 40 (and I was not in good aerobic shape, though getting there now).

GreenSalem 4mo ago

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

HDBaseT 4mo ago

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

felixding 4mo ago

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

qnleigh 4mo 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.

anitil 4mo 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 4mo ago
Meclizine OTC is non-drowsy and works really well for my wife.
- anitil 4mo ago
  I'll give it a go thankyou!
- jimt1234 4mo 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 4mo 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.

qotgalaxy 4mo ago

[dead]

jbverschoor 4mo ago

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

globular-toast 4mo 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.

virgildotcodes 4mo 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/ https://www.aerospacephysiology.com/

specialjack 4mo 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.
- virgildotcodes 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
This doesn't work for everyone, for example, if I get motion sick, closing my eyes makes it far worse, almost immediately.

DamnInteresting 4mo 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.

eszed 4mo 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 4mo ago

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

madh 4mo ago

I love this feature.

aubanel 4mo ago

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

dyl000 4mo ago

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

coatmatter 4mo 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.