Vehicle Motion Cues | Hacker News Reader

Vehicle Motion Cues

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208 pointsAustin_Conlon112 comments

These are the type of problems that are completely invisible to someone who doesn't experience it. I wouldn't have even known it was a problem to solve.

A few years back we played an escape room game online with the whole team. One of the clues was in one of my colleagues "room". All he had to do was read it. "Come one read it man, we can win this." He froze. We all insisted he reads it. He could not read it. We thought he had an internet connection issue. Somehow we managed to escape the room and kept going.

The next day he told me he was embarrassed because he couldn't understand what we were talking about. He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.

> He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.

A similar thing happened to a friend who was over for game night. We were playing the Monopoly Deal card game when he put a brown and a red card next to each other with kind of a confused silence. Look at this:

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/374991_dc4dfa2a6f0d4ebb81...

(Pictured: Three red property cards next to two brown property cards.) They use only color to indicate property group. I was surprised that such a recognizable brand would allow this to get through. About one in twelve men cannot play this game without assistance.

At my first job our project manager was colorblind (red-orange/yellow). One day he dropped a photo of his cars dashboard at a red light with an orange "check engine light"

> "Quick, is this red or orange I need to know if it'll blow".

I'm sure it's a really annoying condition but at the time it was pretty funny and he joked around with it a lot

google lens can probably answer these kinds of questions for him, but uh, he should be aware not to trust his car blowing up with AI!

Just FYI, the check engine light (orange or yellow) is never an emergency. It's normally something emissions-related. Oil and temperature, yes those are much more critical but those are separate (red) indicators. You don't need to rely on color if you know this.

Solid color yeah. A flashing check engine light can be an emergency if you want to avoid more costly repairs later

Yep my check engine light went straight to flashing when I was driving once. I drove to the nearest garage (about 2 miles away) to get it fixed. A spark plug had blown up/exploded and pieces of ceramic from the spark plug had completely scratched up the inside of my cylinder over those 2 miles rendering that engine unfixable.

I mean, they can generally re-sleeve a cylinder. Did no one offer that solution?

They did I believe. I remember getting it fixed and it running for a couple of months after that and then at a certain point the new sleeve I forget what it was called like a Halberg screw or something that they put in also broke and then they weren’t able to do it again.

I don’t think the 2 miles mattered. Once it exploded the engine was done

Yeah, but it would’ve been recoverable if it didn’t have such deep scratches that I got over those 2 miles

I'm colourblind and I have lots of trouble with red and brown, so your friend has my sympathies.

Though in this particular picture on my particular screen, it's not too bad for me.

I have a lot of problems with Splendor and Set though.

(And the fix in Splendor would have been so easy: give every kind of gem its own fixed space, instead of flushing them all to the edge.)

Being colorblind and having motion sickness are totally different things. One cannot get over being colorblind. It can never go away. Motion sickness (99% of cases) can be managed. Exposure therapy works. Look at every navy ship. They start the voyage with half the crew seasick. But after a few months it practically disappears.

One interesting stat from the miltary: cadets who were competative swimmers generally dont get motion sickness. The combination of 0g floating and constant head rotations along diferent axis (flip turns) normalizes the sensations.

Being from a place with many fishermen and navy personel I can assure you that it does not necessarily go away with exposure. Some sailors are just sick when they are at sea.

Yup. Lord Nelson was famously sick every day of his time at sea. But such cases are exceptions. Most do get over it with time. My father was always sick on boafs, unless he was driving. Then he was fine. Each person is different.

> One cannot get over being colorblind. It can never go away.

Bizzare and fascinating thing, but that's perhaps not as rock-solid as it might appear.

Some (or at least 1) people have reported improved color perception post magic mushrooms.

> Though the subject reported intensification of colors while under the acute effects of psilocybin, his score on plates 1–21 improved only slightly to 15 at 12 h post-administration. However, by 24 h post-mushroom administration, his score reached 18, above the cut-off of 17 required by the Ishihara Test for classification of normal color vision,” the report states. “His score peaked at 19 on day eight post-administration. At approximately four months post-mushroom administration, his score remained elevated at 18,” the researchers write.

From https://www.mdlinx.com/article/can-magic-mushrooms-solve-col...

Now, you might say, "Well, that's hogwash, maybe that guy was lying."

To which I say... I experienced it myself! During the experience, colors were significantly more vivid and saturated. (I actually think I "saw" how women for eg see more subtlety between different shades.) Sure, the breeze felt amazing, and nature and trees were peaceful... but I spent a disproportionate amount of time staring at the street and marveling at the colors.

Want a twist? I'll give you two.

1. I'm not color blind, afaik. I've done a number of (admittedly basic) tests and passed them all.

2. The substance I (alledgly) took was not mushrooms. It wasn't even a plant based - or illicit thing! It was a prescription drug/medicine!

I'll leave you to guess it if you want, semi-spoilers below.

It was a drug used (and famously known) primarily as a wakefulness agent for narcolepsy, and I might have taken the R-enantiomer of it.

Damn, I really didn't expect to get a downvote on this. Anything I said wrong, or someone just disagreeing?

I'd think the concept of "brain tweaks can improve color vision" is a good thing.

I think the issue is that color blindness is typically the result of a physical abnormality with the rods/cones in the retina.

Your claim is essentially akin to saying a black-and-white printer could somehow print in color. It's a physical impossibility. Whether certain substances could trick the brain into believing it can see colors is another story altogether.

That said, there are forms of color blindness that are caused by neurological issues, but those are far more rare.

Oh, once you eat enough magic mushrooms, you'll probably see colours from your black and white printer.

(I'm colour-blind.)

I’m colorblind and the weird thing is that it’s somewhat unpredictable when I will not see things. It’s not so simple as “can’t read red on green”. Shading and lighting matter enormously. An orange frisbee is harder to find in grass then a red one.

The strange thing is that I somehow convinced myself that I wasn’t colorblind during my childhood, in spite of obvious evidence, because I often could figure out colors. Then during an eye exam at 19 years old I failed 11/12 vision tests.

> An orange frisbee is harder to find in grass then a red one

same for ungulates. hence, tigers

I always offer to drive because otherwise I'll surely make myself sick by browsing on my phone for something. Even if just conversing with the driver since almost all conversations end up with me inevitably looking something up on my phone.

I have no idea how something like this is ideated, then prototyped, then validated, but it does work wonders for me, and I am so grateful it exists.

Seems pretty straightforward.

1. Be a developer and you (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.

2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear indicates you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.

3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.

4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.

5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.

If anything, I’m surprised it took a decade and a half to come up with it.

Thank you bro!

And this is exactly how things in large corporations don't happen. Things in large corporations who pay so well that nobody makes it through the recruitment filters and competition who's more than 2% off from being a pure assessment metrics maximiser. In my mind, chasing an idea like this just does not match the type.

Why it isn't likely to have happened before: trying is only easy for a developer who is not only very familiar with the API for reading those motion sensors but also with the API for system wide overlay. This a strict no for your run of the mill to-do list app. Combine that with the requirement of being affected themselves (or someone close), having the idea, having the time to try and no competing side quests that take up all attention. And the requirement of when the experiment was successful, having the kind of access that actually serves as a conduit for ideas not only on paper to someone in the position to make it a product. That's a lot of stars that need to align. Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle: would still need someone in the know to try it, but chances are that knowledge combined with a bit of prompting could be a path to PoC implementation that could clear effort thresholds that would stand in the way of conventional coding.

That has nothing to do with the feature being “ideated, then prototyped, then validated”, which is the crux of the conversation. It having taken so long is but a footnote.

> Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle

I would bet money there wasn’t. The feature was introduced in early 2024, meaning it has to be thought about, developed, and tested before that.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-announces-new-a...

> And this is exactly how things in large corporations don't happen. Things in large corporations who pay so well that nobody makes it through the recruitment filters and competition who's more than 2% off from being a pure assessment metrics maximiser. In my mind, chasing an idea like this just does not match the type.

What's your evidence for any of this?

I worked for Google and a lot of other large companies, and recruitment does not work like this at all.

If you want to blame the big companies, you should maybe say that people don't get time to chase these things. Google's 20% time was famously nicknamed 120% time, after all. (The joke being that you can get your 20% time, if you put it on top of your 100% working hours.)

Parent was expressing gratitude.

This isnt quite right. For one 2) is not required at all! I regularly get sick to the point of vomiting, no screen required. It can even happen while i driving! Looking at a screen with this on helps - looking at a screen can now reduce my motion sickness. neat.

4) - it is not motion but acceleration of all kinds. When the plane takes off, the dots move in reverse. When the train stops (no more motion), the dots continue moving for several seconds. Which is to say, its a little more complicated to get it just right than it would seem!

I just found out this capability is also available on Macbooks!

This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...

It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.

I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.

> I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet.

You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.

> I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected

Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.

Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.

Younger me used to "explore" the OS or any software by clicking all the things. It was part of growing and learning. I was never afraid to click the wrong thing. It's similar to those that take things apart just to see what's inside. I had no idea that I was the edge case of personality types.

Things that are "hidden" are just discoveries waiting to happen for those that look. For those that need their hands held and guided through the world, those things might stay "hidden". Just as you feel irked that things are hidden, I feel irked by people that don't go looking. Push all the buttons. Turn all the knobs. Click all the things.

I disagree. Things that are hidden are not meant to be discovered and utilized by everyday users. When I write software or apps and there is a feature that I want users to utilize I do not gate it behind the rare chance that a user will activate it by shaking their device or rotating it 360 degrees or something else obtuse that nobody ever does.

I grew up with custom android ROMs with all the customization I could want and now live in an age where I can take just about any software and use an LLM to customize it to meet my needs, I use Tasker and have scripts out the woohaa on my Linux desktop. I hate it when companies add "hidden" features and don't tell you anywhere.

It's somewhat intentional. Apple always pushes to prioritize the "Happy path" flow, including making it better and "Just works", and part of the way you do that often ends up making it harder, or take more work, to step off the happy path.

It's also Apple, so it's a marketing thing. There's a reason Snapchat sorta developed this feature style, and Apple targets the same demographic, or at least did for a while.

Unfortunately, this has heavily leaked into Android and Windows, and I hate it.

Yep - it's a game changer on the Pendolino trains I get to work as they tilt going around corners. Most people seem to be fine, but for me, it was impossible to get some work done on my commute until vehicle motion cues were a thing and I got > M2 MBP for work.

Very cool that apple made it

I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows

this helped me tremendously when I had to work in the backseat of a moving car. Felt sick pretty quick when I started using the laptop until I remembered about this feature because someone on HN recently posted / commented about it

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been saying to my wife for about a year now that I wish MacBooks had the motion cues feature… turns out I just needed to search for it!

There is a nice little app that does this on Android available on F-droid:

https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness

I tried this and it did nothing for me. For a start, the white dots disappear on a white background, so not a good start. The main thing, though, is while it picked up on the vehicle turning it didn't pick up on acceleration much, which is what actually gives me motion sickness.

The biggest issue Android has both with Kinestop amd this app is unlike Apple's system it does not count for acceleration. I find myself having to look ahead when under acceleration or braking. I have experienced the Apple's motion cues when my friend got curious if it would work because he had no use for it since he did not have motion sickness and I'm unsure if it was just psychological but it felt better than Kinestop which I use.

When did you try it? I got a bit confused by your comment because there's no obvious reason why the accelerometers in an android phone would have a problem reporting forward/backward acceleration any less accurately than lateral. So I installed it and the 'Dots' mode definitely responds to acceleration normal to the screen, but that mode is marked as 'New' so might not have been present when you last looked.

I had used it in my last bus trip around two months ago. It could be, I'll be testing it out in the future and hope the issues with it get resolves because for me there was no reaction to acceleration.

It's supposed to handle acceleration though, if you bring your phone to your face quickly dots get larger. I've done some in-car testing, but things get squeamish quickly so it's not the easiest to validate.

Changing the color / adding some contrast would be quite a simple change

I just tested and it does if I move my phone around violently. It would maybe work in sports car, but not regular driving, which can still make me sick.

There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago, where I discovered KineStop which is an app that does the same on Android. I've only tried it a few times but it has worked every time.

Worth checking first whether your phone already has this natively. My one year old Android by Honor has it built in and exposed in the quick settings (sliding the right down). I know a couple others also have it, but not all of them as discoverable

I use KineStop and it works better than Apple's version on iOS did for me. Hopefully AOSP implements one because you do have to give KineStop rather invasive permissions.

Eventually I will try the open source offerings.

Motion sickness person here. iPhone’s stock one doesn’t work for me. Haven’t tried that on Android. Will see if something similar is available on iOS as third party app.

There's also glasses for this that put a fluid filled tube in your peripheral vision. I want to try it next time I'm on a sailboat and have to do something inside the boat while it's pitching.

A related post from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557530

Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.

My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?

It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.

Honor phones have this in the quick settings (the thing that opens when you slide the right side of the top bar down), labeled "Motion Sickness". Felt well-explained and discoverable.

But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others

On Vivo it's called "Motion Cues". Subtitle: "Dots shift forwards and backwards during acceleration and deceleration". And then it says in tiny font it's for motion sickness, I guess I didn't read that far last time.

This was invented long ago in an app, it got cloned in other apps, vendors paid attention and made it a built-in feature. Same as Swype.

This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!

Were a lot of people rawdogging their Thinkpads while driving back in the day? Plugged into an inverter into the cigarette lighter to trickle charge? :-)

Passengers already existed back then, which this intended for. The motion cues are not meant to decrease motion sickness for a driver doom scrolling on their phone while operating their vehicle.

I've had 12-volt-input power supplies for every laptop I've ever owned. Lind makes the most reliable ones, but they're expensive, and there's a thriving aftermarket of alternatives too.

Also, Lind is the brand you're likely to find sold alongside an ex-public-safety Toughbook. Since these were my first serious car computers, that's just how the majority of my mobile computing looked for a decade or more.

However, Toughbooks encased their HDD's in gel, and had been doing so since long before the advent of MEMS accelerometers, so they didn't jump on the HDAPS innovation along with IBM.

This feature has helped me so much since i found it. I have kinda bad motion sickness and this has really helped me

The question I have is whether a phone with motion cues causes less nausea than no phone at all in a window-less boat.

It did for me, but n=1.

This is an easy enable with "Automatic Detection". Are there any other phone "Accessibility" options that are useful to everyone?

Under "Display & Text Size": "on/off labels" and "increase contrast". "Reduce transparency" is a bit of a mixed bag but is worth trying out.

Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.

Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.

There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.

As for Reduce Transparency, next iOS version has a proper slider to adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass - worth playing with for anyone on the beta

I love the background sounds feature. You can add a shortcut in the control center to turn it on and off. I used it a ton when I lived in an apartment with particularly noisy neighbors

Not technically "Accessibility" but Android has a "developer" setting called "Show Touches" which puts little dots on screen when you touch it.

I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.

I think that this setting should be promoted out of developer settings as i find it so useful

I use the magnifier on iOS to examine small electronics on a PCB, or other small detailed things.

Similarly, on MacOS I use the Zoom feature (Command Key + mouse scroll) to pixel peep when doing graphical work.

What do you mean useful to everyone?

Do you think everyone gets motion sickness?

On Android I use super dim, as someone who enjoys low light situations, even the darkest brightness setting can be too bright sometimes

Bit of a niche, but I use inverted colors and the camera app to find ticks on my dog. Enabled by triple-clicking the lock button under Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Classic invert

Please expand… how does this help you find ticks?

This has been reposted here several times in the last few weeks, but it is a very neat feature. I find myself getting quite motion sick on the bus if I look at my phone, but these dots help me at least check messages here and there without immediately feeling like I'm going to throw up.

I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.

Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.

I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.

I always assumed this is triggered by Bluetooth connection to the car?

It triggers for me on trains too, so I think it's just accelerometer + location

I would assume the acceleration pattern of being in a vehicle is somewhat distinct.

I'd be curious what happens when you are in a vehicle that drives completely steady (no turns/acceleration/deceleration) - would it eventually turn off? I guess you wouldn't get motion sick in that case either way.

I've used it on trains a bit and it does turn off when the train is going straight ahead. You might be going 200km/h, but if the speed isn't changing and you're always going forward you don't really feel any force, and neither does the phone, so the dots don't need to be there any more.

It’s likely based on motion through the gyro/accelerometers, it triggers on any vehicle I’ve tried. Works wonders on trains and subways as well.

a fun one is seeing the dots go wild when you're on a plane that's taking off

I think two accelerometers would do it at different ends of the phone. Normal hand-based motion will rarely include a sustained exact acceleration in one direction on both of these at the same time e.

Is this related to roll and pitch motion in sea sickness where by knowing the horizon and direction of travel can help?

I have been too nervous to really try using the phone as a passenger in a car, but it has also activated for me on trains and planes, where I suffer less from motion sickness anyway.

Not enough experience yet to say for sure whether they work, but the dots look so cool that I will keep it on regardless.

Super helpful for me. Also insightful: on trains, when the train stops completely, the dots begin moving in reverse for a few moments. Staring at them in these moments helps me quite a bit, and also teaches me to visualize the disconnect in what i feel from what is happening and my bodies inability to account for it.

I use this a lot on my MacBook Air when working in cabs. It’s beautiful and works well for me

One of the best and most clever "hidden" features. Very Apple.

I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.

I like the "bubbling" dots effect that occurs in an airplane when making a turn. Anyone know the reason?

I guess they're moving in the opposite direction of the turn to force the perception of turning.

Wonder if Tesla should add something like this to rear screen. It’s not very useful for most adults due to how low it is, but kids willing to get screen time on anything (not that I condone).

I was so skeptical of this feature, now I cannot live without this.

I wish this worked a little better. It doesn't solve motion sickness for me when looking at my phone in a car, but it does seem to make it a little less severe.

In case you have a problem with the iPhone performance, make sure inside settings disable `Dynamic` pattern for this feature.

iPhone 12 Pro (26.5.2)

Once this was announced a few years back, I was very skeptical that a few dots on the screen would be all that's needed to help me.

And yet, apparently it was.

It's not perfect, but the dots help me to go from instantly feeling sick to lasting 30-40 minutes before I have to stop looking at the screen.

Would it also work onboard a ship? Or movements are too slow to provide enough visual cues on a small screen.

It absolutely is working on a ship. At least for me it helps e.g. when traveling on a big ferry etc. but I guess everybody has a different level of tolerance.

Interested because this autumn will board a ferry for an overnight journey. Sometimes I did suffer seasickness and have read taking medication when onboard already is too late. So I am happy to know there may be a potential solution available. Just in case. Thanks.

Works surprisingly well, had a super sensitive passenger in the car the other day and zero signs of nausea.

How about VR glasses? Could similar approach help there?

It's pretty cool but it does hog CPU a bit.

Saw someone using this on the train, looked cool

Any reason this doesn’t work in CarPlay?

Just speculation here. CarPlay is intended to be used on the dashboard, so you already have the view of the road as a reference, and these dots may be considered a distraction to the driver.

Another super useful feature is Accessibility > Zoom > Use keyboard shortcuts.

The you can use Command+Option+Plus and Command+Option+Minus to zoom the entire screen.

It’s a great way to zoom in on anything regardless of whether an app supports it or not. Sometimes I help family members remotely and look through a bad camera at a document on their side, and applying this zoom makes the difference between being able to decipher the content and not.

n=1, but it works great for me!

I think this is a good example of how Apple is doing well in the application of AI and also uncharacteristically doing poorly in the application of AI.

Doing well as it quietly is coming up with helpful product updates like this which are buried in support docs and limited splash.

I kind of prefer this more quiet usage of application of AI.

This is not AI related at all though. The phone has the accelerometer which tells it all the info this feature needs

What about this is "AI"?

Everything's computer.

Can you play back virtual time shifted vehicle motion cues, to make yourself barf on demand? This could be a godsend for bulemics. Accessibility at its finest.

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