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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

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.

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OTOH, motion sickness is often called "car sickness" for a reason, people who suffer from it only sometimes suffer on a bus, and rarely if ever on a train or a plane, so I'm not sure I would agree that "all transportation and tourism related businesses" are impacted. Also, doesn't dimenhydrinate work for your wife or kids?

> and rarely if ever on a train or a plane

I experience motion sickness more easily on planes than on trains or buses. Boats are a problem too, in heavy seas.

In a large plane with no or very light turbulence the motion sickness doesn't brake through, it's only an uneasy feeling. In heavier turbulence, or in things like a small Cessna or a sailplane it gets worse. I haven't had to vomit in these situations since I was a little kid, but I do feel bad from nausea.

Funnily enough, I don't get seasick in heavy seas - even below deck without a horizon - but I will sitting at the dock with light motion. It's like my vestibular system "knows" to shut up when the chaotic motion goes beyond certain parameters.

Nausea is from Latin "seasickness", known for thousands years.

From my experience bus was the worst as you can't get front seat, even worse were backward positioned seats. Train and plane were great. Car in the middle, depend on road and driving style.

If I was on bus during childhood you would know by stops it made. We avoided that by traveling by car.

Dimenhydrinate has undesirable side effects. My wife cannot ride buses and gets sick on planes too. It restricts our travel quite a bit.

Yeah, my wife and I were on a cruise once that was going through some VERY rough waters, and the swaying of the ship was making us sick. We took dimenhydrinate and it put us to sleep right after breakfast and we slept until like 5 PM. Lost an entire day.

There's a non-drowsy anti-sickness formula out now called meclizine, but I found it to be less effective.

> They don't cure my kids' or wife's car sickness, unfortunately.

Isn't it a better "cure" to look out the window rather than stare at a screen?

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.

If you're looking for non drowsy options, I've found ginger capsules to be very effective as an anti nausea treatment.

Supposedly 1/3 of people are "highly susceptible".

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?

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.

It's not a 'cure' for me either but it does allow me to do quick short tasks on the phone if necessary and then I can get back to focusing on the horizon.

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