Even those who don’t routinely suffer from motion sickness have likely gotten queasy at some point while attempting to concentrate on a phone or tablet on particularly windy roads.
Apple is aware of this and will soon introduce a strange software solution that could help alleviate this prevalent condition. It’s called Vehicle Motion Cues and will be included as part of a more comprehensive suite of accessibility enhancements coming to iOS and iPadOS sometime later this year.
The feature works by leveraging iPhone and iPad sensors to detect motion. The direction of the motion is then displayed visually by a series of small animated dots visible on the edges of the screen.
So how can this combat motion sickness exactly? According to Apple’s research, motion sickness is often triggered by “a sensory conflict between what a person sees and what they feel.”
By showing moving dots on the screen that travel in the same direction as the vehicle, Apple believes it can reduce this sensory conflict and help alleviate the sense of nausea many experience.
Apple says the feature can be set to automatically show on iPhones, presumably in a similar fashion to how iOS’s driving mode automatically engages. The accessibility feature can also be turned off and on via Control Center.
