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.
> 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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)?
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.
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
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?
104 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 76.1 ms ] threadCan 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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
It's mostly just Devs copying apples feature, nothing too weird about it
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
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.
The crazy thing is if I focus on the dots (versus the text behind them), my nausea comes back.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
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.
FIX THE CODE!
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.
I get car sick easily but on open water I have to sit and watch the horizon or it's adios cookies.