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
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.
Didn't know there's a "car sickness" strictly related to reading the phone while in transit, I knew there's those people that can barely survive riding a car but that was it.
I do get the "reading phone motion sickness" a couple of days after heavy drinking. The hangover has worn off but there's this weird after-effect which gradually fades over a few days until it completely disappears. At first I thought how the hell do I get car sickness until eventually correlated with reading the phone and having to stop or else.
Based on my manifestations being chemically-induced, wonder if that's also valid in general. Some level of Gaba or something, which is normally lower in most people, gets elevated by drinking and then (hopefully) cleared.
> Based on my manifestations being chemically-induced, wonder if that's also valid in general.
Interesting observation. I only drink on one day of my weekends these days, so I don't think mine would be correlated to alcohol. But sugar maybe? It's an interesting thought that it might be related to some kind of metabolic process that's influencing that feeling.
Interesting observation back at you! :) Never thought of this but recently I started being a bit more careful with my sugar and carbs intake, after a blood test has shown an elevated level of glycated hemoglobin. Could be it's not alcohol per se but disruption of blood sugar after a binge drink, thanks for making the connection. Darn it, first no sugar, then no carbs now I have to cut down on alcohol too, getting old sucks :P
Even just checking the time on phone makes me feel sick. I'm using Apple cues from the day they released. It helps, but I still cannot respond to Whatsapp messages. I envy people who can use their phones, laptops during a ride.
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.
I started getting nausea from FPS games around the time I got into my 30s. It was when Fallout 4 came out and I just had to play that game. So I did some research and found out about sea-bands. Theyre for morning sickness that pregnant women get. They worked wonders for my FPS nausea. I was able to play through many games after that without getting sick. Put them on about 10 mins before playing and wear them for the duration.
Interesting, I never heard of those bands. The standard method for decreasing motion sickness in FPS games is widening the FoV and turning off features like screen shake.
>I never got past the first level of Wolfenstein back in the day
Wolfenstein FOV was way too low, something like <70, which caused that feeling sick, try to get games where you can set you FOV to 85+ and it made a world of difference. motion sickness =gone
My wife calls it sim sickness, because she can’t do any POV type games like racing or fps, too. She can play WoW or third person games if they’re zoomed out enough.
She also got motion sickness until she turned on the Apple dots.
> Maybe the newer FPS games would be better for my brain
It might do. I recently had a bout of nostalgia and wanted to play GTA4 again (as a Uni student I only played part-way through without being able to finish the story). I ended up buying a used PS3 to play it, but I couldn't get through 30 mins of it before feeling nauseous. The low FPS on the PS3 just wasn't sitting right with me.
I ended up getting an Xbox Series S. The constant 60fps on this console was a game changer for me.
One of the other key issues (besides FOV which was mentioned) is the size of the virtual space relative to the speed your character moves at. So for example, Half Life 2 has you moving around in a lab building pretty quickly > instant nausea for me. Meanwhile running around outdoors in Skyrim might not bother you at all.
Visual complexity ups the ante. Think of walking through a grocery store with high shelves filled with a variety of products -- this can cause migraine in some people and, to a lesser extent, also affects vertigo. So you may not want to play, say, grocery store simulators (although I have no idea who actually does anyway, why are those things popular!?).
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 that makes sense, rapid onscreen movement, but your surroundings are fixed. I feel like you hear of that version less often, but it interesting it basically the inverse of the other kind.
You don't need to hide it so deeply, it can be added to your control panel add the control 'vehicle motion cues' and you can add a button which allows you to change it between on/auto/off.
I highly recommend people look through apple's accessibility features every major release they seem to quietly release some real gems.
They hid a whole app for sleep/chill/productivity/wellbeing sounds in there as well!
It’s even added automatically the first time you turn it on. But I had no idea the setting even existed, despite occasionally checking Accessibility. We need a “What’s New” for Settings :D
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.
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?
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