Do you get car sick? Apple's iOS update could help deal with motion sickness.
Is it damn near impossible for you to catch up on your social media feed when in a moving vehicle without feeling like you’re going to upchuck your last meal into the passenger footwell? If this doesn’t happen to you, chances are you know someone who suffers from motion sickness, or “car sickness” as it’s often called. Now, Apple may have a solution for its mobile devices to roll out this year.
For people who are motion sick, it’s usually triggered when trying to read something in a moving vehicle. It’s not fun, especially in situations where reading something goes a long way like on a road trip for example. Generally, the only solutions are to not read something, take a Dramamine which will likely make you very drowsy, or listen to music or audiobooks instead.
Tech giant Apple is preparing to launch a new solution. As part of a suite of new accessibility features coming to iOS in a future software update Apple is launching what it calls “Vehicle Motion Cues.” The feature joins several car-specific iOS functions Apple has added in recent history. Vehicle Motion Cues is based on research that shows that motion sickness is caused by a “sensory conflict” between what a person sees and what they feel. For example, think about those who get sick when using a VR headset because the VR experience is moving while the person is physically standing still.
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Speaking of VR, Apple tried solving the motion problem before via virtual reality according to a patent we came across back in 2022. We gathered at the time that Apple was looking to solve motion sickness in autonomous cars with virtual projections and that it would be connected to the long-rumored “Apple car.” It’s possible that this new iOS feature evolved from that.
Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues relies on sensors in the iPhone and iPad like the accelerometer and gyroscopes. It then takes that information to overlay a series of animated dots on the edges of the screen which reflect the changes in vehicle motion. The dots react to the vehicle turning left, right, accelerating and braking. The dots move in the opposite direction of the vehicle which would match the inertial forces the occupants would feel.
In theory, this gives the person’s brain something to match up with in relation to the way the vehicle is moving. We’re not sure if Apple worked directly with a neurophysiologist but it says that it did consult published, leading research when developing this feature.
Apple hasn’t given a release date for when Vehicle Motion Cues comes to iOS, only that it would be “coming later this year.” However, when looking at the company’s track record, generally when new accessibility features are announced in May they release with the next major iOS update. In this case that would be iOS 18 which rumored to launch in September of this year, or around the time when the next iPhone will probably be revealed.
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Considering that this is an accessibility feature and relies on sensors that have been part of iPhones and iPads for several device generations, we have to imagine that this feature will also be backwards compatible to some extent. We’re speculating here but we would guess that any iPhone or iPad that can run iOS 18 will likely be able to use Apple Vehicle Motion Cues. Call us curious, but we’re dying to test this feature out on some of our MotorTrend staffer’s who experience motion sickness to see just how effective this feature is.
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