Second Life is too expensive!

[Suspiria Finucane]

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Penny Patton wrote:

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

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Gadget Portal wrote:

I'd love for everything in SL to be to scale.

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Just curious, how to you scale imagination? SL would be a boring place indeed if it mimicked RL in every way.

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This misses the point. It's not about mimicking RL, it's about getting the most out of SL.

For example, avatars, without tricks, can be anywhere from about 4' to about 9', except the vast majority of SL avatars are squeezed into the topmost extreme, 7 to 9' tall.

So, anyone who wants to be a 9' tall giant has their imagination restricted by this. You can't look like a 9' tall giant when the average guy, who thinks he is 6', is actually 8'. When everything is out of scale, it removes your ability to deliberately use scale in design.

Anyone who wants to build a large, detailed environment in SL, whether it be their own avatar's home or a massive roleplaying area, also has their imagination constricted if they don't take scale into consideration. When you make things larger you have less space and prims available to do more.

Not to mention the performance issues. If everthing is made to scale, 128m is 128m. If everything is scaled up huge, then you need to increase your draw distance to 256m to percieve the same amount of content, except due to how LOD and CG rendering works, you're videocard is struggling to render far more. SL is straining to send more information to you. More information needs to be constantly updated.

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I understand the performance issues in your opinion. I still maintain however that if a person wants to be 9' tall, it's their prerogative and imagination.

 

I do have a solution though, (not sure if it has been suggested before) LL could be persuaded to create a new continent, Scaleville or something. On that continent, certain rules of scale would apply throughout. If it was popular, the place would fill up and become somewhat of an experiment for the grid.

 

Just a thought...

 

[Penny Patton]

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Suspiria Finucane wrote:

I understand the performance issues in your opinion. I still maintain however that if a person wants to be 9' tall, it's their prerogative and imagination.

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I agree completely, and I imagine Gadget does, too. Everything being "to scale" doesn't mean everyone is the same size, or restricted to real world average. It means size choices are deliberate rather than the product of starting everyone 7' tall and not giving them any tools to know how tall they actually are.

Like I said, the average 7-9' avatar has no idea, not a clue, not even a sneaking suspicion of their avatar's size. I've seen numerous such avatars who, in their profile, describe their avatar as being about 6' tall. And, again, this prevents people who actually want to be 9' tall from achieving the desired affect. People with intentionally tall avatars tend to be fans of scale.

 

My solution would be to fix the height displayed in thge appearance editor so it's correct, supply new users with a set of starter avatars with correct scale and proportions, improve the default camera placement settings and include a few useful presets to give people options, and start rebuilding the infohubs, oriontation sims and welcome areas to scale,

I'd set up the appearance editor so when creating a new shape, rather than just giving you the current default shape it would prompt you to select from a bunch of premade shapes of different sizes and body types, to give you a good starting point similar to your end goal.

I'd also include building tutorials which could be accessed via the SL Viewer (They'd take you to a Linden sandbox or let you remain where you are if you can build there) which would talk you through building simple objects with the in-world tools and provide helpful information on building efficiently to make the most of resources and reduce lag.

 That last bit would include tips on scale but the focus would be on helping people dive into building, from prims to mesh import, in ways that reduce lag and increase performance for everyone.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Let me preface this by stating, my avatar is actually 6'5" tall.

I was in a store yesterday, looking for furniture, when the shop owner announced a hidden sale on an item. Immediately  the store was flooded with people hunting for it. Among the 30 or so people, 3 women were shorter than i was.. Each and every male was a meter taller than i was, I was accused of or told: being a child av, a teen, a pedo (no clue as to their thought patterns), i should have been banned, make your av taller! (heard that several times) and the three that were shorter than me offered friendship so they could have someone of a comparable height to go dancing, chatting, or... other things with..

TL;DR

Maxed out avs make things harder for the average sized ones. If all avs were maxed out then people would whine about not being able to be taller.. the solution is to make yourself shorter, and hope it catches on.

[Coby Foden]

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Lucretia Brandenburg wrote:

 

... it is very difficult to get realistic, attractive proportions on a "short" avatar.

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The short avatars here are 1.60 meters tall (measured accurately with prim).  How come it appears that the short avatars seem to have more correct human proportions than the very tall ones?

In my experience getting short shape realistic is not "very difficult".  Especially so for female avatar.  Small slender male shapes will have some difficulties at shoulders though.

 

[Penny Patton]

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Coby Foden wrote:

In my experience getting short shape realistic is not "very difficult".  Especially so for female avatar.  Small slender male shapes will have some difficulties at shoulders though.

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I think I made a similar post a while back in the thread. It's not more difficult to get good proportions with smaller shapes, the problem lies in that it's difficult in general to make major changes to a shape.

If you start with a 7' tall shape, you need to change EVERYTHING to scale that avatar down even to 6'. Only a 12 inch difference but you need to adjust every single proportion or it will look awful.

It's just as difficult starting from a 6' shape and making it 7', moreso due to the limits of the sliders preventing taller avatars from having correct proportions (you cannot have an avatar at the max avatar height with correct proportions, LL did not set up the appearance sliders to make it possible).

I wish the appearance editor had a "scale" slider, which let you adjust the size of an avatar while keeping the proportions. Many people believe this is what the height slider is for, but it's really not.

[Coby Foden]

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Penny Patton wrote:

I wish the appearance editor had a "scale" slider, which let you adjust the size of an avatar while keeping the proportions. Many people believe this is what the height slider is for, but it's really not.

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Indeed, an overall scale slider would be superb.  Once the shape has been tweaked to something pleasing, then one could just scale the shape to the required size.  Just like in Blender for example, scale a mesh, everything is scaled proportionally.

[161488303349]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

I wish the appearance editor had a "scale" slider, which let you adjust the size of an avatar while keeping the proportions. Many people believe this is what the height slider is for, but it's really not.

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Indeed, an overall 

scale

slider would be superb.  Once the shape has been tweaked to something pleasing, then one could just scale the shape to the required size.  Just like in Blender for example, scale a mesh, everything is scaled proportionally.

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on pkr they do that. the sliders. the avatar textures not as good as SL but the shape editor is way better

like you can pick a head type. is full range of them covering every type of base facial ethnics. and blends of

when you say stretch the head size (high level sliders) then it automagic adjust some of the other lower level face sliders like cheeks eyes brows as well depending on the base facial ethnic. it do the same when use the age slider to make younger or older. can then tweak the lower levels as you like. is pretty cool how it do that

 

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

I should have qualified that and said for me, it is difficult to get my short shape into proportions I find attractive because I do what Penny stated, start off with a taller shape, the proportions of which I like, and begin the process of tweaking it down. A scaler would be great, but without that, it is a process that takes me quite some time. Below is me, 7 feet 1 inch, while wearing 3 inch heels down to 5 feet 5 inches in the same outfit.

Several years ago, I went to a prominant shape maker and asked her to mod a shape I liked, I wanted something shorter and more realistic. Her idea of short was 6 feet 6 inches, and the proportions were way off. When I asked for shorter, I wound up with a short, squat, overly busty and very wide hipped 5 feet 8 inches. So for one person it is easy, for another more difficult ... however, when well known shape makers whose shapes are very much a standard in SL (for good shapes go to this shop .. it is one newbies are often sent to for "the best" shapes) have difficulty scaling down, indicates to me that what comes easily for you does not come so easily for all.

Personally, I'd rather have what to my eye looks attractive and in proportion regardless of height, than what to my eye looks unattractive. However, if you are going to compare avatars by height, some attempt to present better proportioned examples of taller avatars (the one in the red dress looks more like a joke and I've never seen anyone that out of proportion) rather than extremes would be more apt an illustration. Or else comparing badly proportioned tall avatars to badly proportioned short avatars would seem more fair.

[Penny Patton]

A large part of the problem is that most SL users, including most of the prominant shape makers, don't have a very good grasp of human proportions to begin with and the appearance editor is extremely unforgiving.

There are plenty of examples of attractive, realistically proportioned shapes out there.

There is one reason why it is ultimately easier to create proportionate shapes with realistic size avatars, LL made the arms too short for the tallest shapes. The arm slider maxes out with the arms being too short for the more extremely tall avatars. With men you can get up to about 8' I believe, but oddly Linden Lab skewed arms shorter for the female shape and women over about 6'3" or so wind up with short arms, more excessively so the taller the shape is.

This is why most avatar's arms tend to only reach to just below the waist, if that. In reality, an adult human's arms reach to about mid thigh, and stretched out to either side measure very nearly equal to one's height, give or take a couple of inches.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Lucretia Brandenburg wrote:

I should have qualified that and said

for me

, it is difficult to get

my

short shape into proportions

I

find attractive because I do what Penny stated, start off with a taller shape, the proportions of which I like, and begin the process of tweaking it down. A scaler would be great, but without that, it is a process that takes me quite some time. Below is me, 7 feet 1 inch, while wearing 3 inch heels down to 5 feet 5 inches in the same outfit.

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You should start from scratch making a proportionate avatar, then apply your face, and some body customizations.

your arms remain too short in the shorter version, and your shoulders are as wide as a man's.

The hip-waist-bust ratio might desire some adjustment, but this has variety among RL people - so this is where you can make yourself unique and still proportionate. But the arm length and shoulder width are what science makes them.

 

The top issues in getting proportionate are, in order of severity:

1. Body midpoint at base of crotch (put 2 equal length prims together, stretch to height, and they should meet at your crotch).
2. Wingspan of arms = to height from sole to top of bald head (hold arms in T-pose to test).
3. Shoulders of proper width for the sex of the person (a giveaway for a person who is transgender).
4. Head size. No pin heads or anime heads. Body about 7 to 8 heads tall.
5. Man hands (unfixable in SL, but in RL this is the other 'dead giveway' of a transgender person who transitioned as an adult). Man hands refers not to length but thickness / width / finger-to-palm ratio. SL slider only adjusts total length - the one thing that is not adjusted 'individually' in biology).

 If you can get these right, a lot of other mistakes people often make don't become as noticeable.

 

I think arms are the biggest killer for SL avatars - because the slider maxes out before most people can get even close to proportionate - quite a LOT of the blame for the messed up porportions in SL falls on whoever made the original avatar '3d model' for SL back in 2003 or so. Even back then, there were amatuer 3D modelers all over renderosity who would have drooled at the chance to make their model in a low rez video game version. Had LLs gone for any one of them, we'd be looking at works of art today in SL for the 'worst case' shapes...

 

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

Thank you for taking the time to look at the pictures. Arm length and shoulder width I know I need to tweak, the bust and hips, I'm fine with.

When I play around with my avatar's shape, I tend to consider my RL shape and work from there. I have very wide square sort of shoulders in RL, and I have a bit of trouble narrowing them on my avatar without getting a slope to them, since I sort of pattern them after RL a bit too much.

Quick aside here ... Funny but true, my RL sister also has very wide shoulders but also a very wide, deep ribcage. She's also 9 inches taller than me. When we were teenagers, she used to borrow my jackets and literally split them down the back, like the Hulk busting out of Bruce Banner's clothing until I wised up and started loaning her oversized stretchy sweaters.

I'm very short waisted with short legs in RL, and absordly busty, so I tend to try to lengthen my SL legs and torso, and keep the bust smaller on my avatar, and also the hips, not wanting to be top or bottom heavy.

I have gotten some correctly proportioned and sized shapes and am going to play around with modding them, after I fiddle with the arms and shoulders a bit more on this one. Thanks for your input!

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Lucretia Brandenburg wrote:

When I play around with my avatar's shape, I tend to consider my RL shape and work from there. I have very wide square sort of shoulders in RL, and I have a bit of trouble narrowing them on my avatar without getting a slope to them, since I sort of pattern them after RL a bit too much.

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This is one of those areas where SL has one slider for what needs about 5. SL's should slider just seems to expand the thing overall, and not always in the right directions... So you get that slope, and it ends up looking not quite right...

On the one hand the more sliders they add, the more exponentially sluggish the avatar gets in rendering on various computers... but on the other hand, you can look at competing MMOs like City of Heroes (2004) or Champions (2009 or 2010) and see that you can add customizeability that works without suffering the same lag you would if editing this in Poser or Daz3D by being super smart about where you optimize. City of Heroes had pretty funky models too... primative for even their era. But still better than what we have if you remove our prims, mesh, sculpties, and shadow-baked skins...

 

Ever want to know how 'fugly' ALL of our shapes really are, even if 137% proportional, put on a skin that is a single color, like just a white tiff image... and be prepared to scream a little inside... and then thank the maker of your skin...

 

 

[Suspiria Finucane]

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Penny Patton wrote:

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I think I made a similar post a while back in the thread. It's not more difficult to get good proportions with smaller shapes, the problem lies in that it's difficult in general to make major changes to a shape.

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 Very true indeed. I resized my AV 2 years ago and yes, it was interesting to say the least but accomplished.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

CAN WE GET BACK ON TOPIC???

[Alicia Sautereau]

No

Avatar proportions are a pain to get right with the current sliders due to the sudden drops/misbehaviors, and then you get to the issue of "it just doesn`t looks right"

Decided to put a few more kg`s on ali as the, compared, tiny and skinny started to look abit sl`ish again
I still regret it abit of doing it as you need to adjust nearly everything instead of applying abit of body fat and adjust shoulders, some are`s get affected, some not, some get weird proportions due to muscles etc, ugh...

Tweaking here and there abit for the past 3 weeks, it still doesn`t looks quite right, but better then being to "skinny" 
I hate the shoulder part aswell, the sliders mess up in so many way it either looks to narrow cause of the drop, or to wide when the ao is enabled but weird again wen sitting

[Penny Patton]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

CAN WE GET BACK ON TOPIC???

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While I would say the topics are very much intertwined, I would also agree that even so sims are still extremely pricey. Essentially, owning a sim is paying for server hosting space...except rather than charging you tier for the server, LL forces customers to buy LL new hardware, but then keeps the hardware for themselves.

 

That's a great business model for LL, assuming they can get people to do it. But fewer and fewer people seem to be finding it worthwhile, meaning SL is losing sims at an increasing pace which really makes on question the "setup fee" in the first place when LL already has the hardware to spare and multiple sims are hosted on a single piece of hardware.

One comparison people should be making is how does paying for a sim stack up to paying for the equivailent amount of server space with a web hosting provider?

 

[Penny Patton]

Not to mention the way land sales are handled on the mainland. Rather than treating land ownership for what it is, essentially web hosting, LL has set up a "real estate game" people are forced to play with real money to "buy" land they never truly own and must continue to pay tier fees on.

Is this really the best way to handle it, is it sustainable? If not, is it even possible to change SL's approach to land ownership at this point in time?

I'm not sure, but these seem like questions people should be pondering.

[161488303349]

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Penny Patton wrote:

One comparison people should be making is how does paying for a sim stack up to paying for the equivailent amount of server space with a web hosting provider?

 

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that a starting point. then have to add a margin on for the development of the SL world. straight out web hosting provider don't carry that kinda additional dev overhead

[Perrie Juran]

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16 wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

One comparison people should be making is how does paying for a sim stack up to paying for the equivailent amount of server space with a web hosting provider?

 

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that a starting point. then have to add a margin on for the development of the SL world. straight out web hosting provider don't carry that kinda additional dev overhead

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And we can't forget the person that they pay to close all our support tickets. 

[Alicia Sautereau]

The 2 persons?

Penny, don`t forget also that continent of linden homes, wich causes less people to rent a plot from an estate
Still remember the day they started to introduce it, all estate owners i knew saw this coming, LL shooting them selfs in the foot and dragging estate owners with them

and here we are...

[Penny Patton]

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16 wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

One comparison people should be making is how does paying for a sim stack up to paying for the equivailent amount of server space with a web hosting provider?

 

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that a starting point. then have to add a margin on for the development of the SL world. straight out web hosting provider don't carry that kinda additional dev overhead

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I agree, but I'm not certain the sheer amount of cost SL hosting has over web hosting can be entirely justified by development costs.

Then there's also the issue that LL seems intent on wasting most of their develment budget. They refuse to hire people like an art director or an experience designer, both of whom are absolutely vital for LL to make informed development decisions, and they throw away an obscene amount of money on projects that prove to be, to the surprise of no one except LL, entirely useless, promising new features that get dropped without explanation, or half-finished, poorly developed features that get tossed to us broken.

 

If they hired an art director and an experience designer, gave them some authority and followed their recommendations, they might be able to better manage their development resources and do more with less overhead and waste in the long term.

[161488303349]

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Penny Patton wrote:

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16 wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

One comparison people should be making is how does paying for a sim stack up to paying for the equivailent amount of server space with a web hosting provider?

 

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that a starting point. then have to add a margin on for the development of the SL world. straight out web hosting provider don't carry that kinda additional dev overhead

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I agree, but I'm not certain the sheer amount of cost SL hosting has over web hosting can be entirely justified by development costs.

Then there's also the issue that LL seems intent on wasting most of their develment budget. They refuse to hire people like an art director or an experience designer, both of whom are absolutely vital for LL to make informed development decisions, and they throw away an obscene amount of money on projects that prove to be, to the surprise of no one except LL, entirely useless, promising new features that get dropped without explanation, or half-finished, poorly developed features that get tossed to us broken.

 

If they hired an art director and an experience designer, gave them some authority and followed their recommendations, they might be able to better manage their development resources and do more with less overhead and waste in the long term.

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i think that the linden solution to this is mesh. and is going to be up to us to make/interpret/imagine the inworld same as ever

we starting to see mesh avatars now. whole and parts. we will get more and more of them as well bc of tools like avastar. if linden do anything big next on avatars i think is going to be in that direction

like custom bones better rigging stuff like that. i think the deformer been stalled bc of this. rather than try fit a deformer onto what is by todays standards quite a primitive shape then how can deformation be done in the context of custom shapes. if that is the thinking then i would actual support that

+

sometimes people point to things like LDPW as linden getting involved in content control/building/standards. is kinda true but only if look at from the Estate Manager pov. like mainland is their estate and so they compelled to put some money into their estate from that pov

if linden thought they could then then i think they would flick the mainland continents to the Estate Barons and withdraw even further from the day to day running of the inworld. just be a world/experience platform builder and farm out everything else

 

[Penny Patton]

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16 wrote:

i think that the linden solution to this is mesh. and is going to be up to us to make/interpret/imagine the inworld same as ever

we starting to see mesh avatars now. whole and parts. we will get more and more of them as well bc of tools like avastar. if linden do anything big next on avatars i think is going to be in that direction

like custom bones better rigging stuff like that. i think the deformer been stalled bc of this. rather than try fit a deformer onto what is by todays standards quite a primitive shape then how can deformation be done in the context of custom shapes. if that is the thinking then i would actual support that

+

sometimes people point to things like LDPW as linden getting involved in content control/building/standards. is kinda true but only if look at from the Estate Manager pov. like mainland is their estate and so they compelled to put some money into their estate from that pov

if linden thought they could then then i think they would flick the mainland continents to the Estate Barons and withdraw even further from the day to day running of the inworld. just be a world/experience platform builder and farm out everything else

 

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But that's no solution at all. LL has already shot themselves in the foot with mesh because they've made some absolutely amateurish mistakes with its implementation and failed to capitalize on opportunities presented by the introduction of mesh.

Don't make the mistake of believing an art director is just someone in charge of making content, LL's art staff should be providing critical internal feedback on development of the tools and features available to the userbase.

 An art director would be the one tell people like Oz's boss, "Hey, before we implement mesh import we need to make sure it is capable of X, Y and Z. Oh, and hey, if we're ever going to introduce a new avatar mesh it's pretty important we capitalize on the release of mesh import, and the shift in new content that will follow, as the time to do that. Here's my recommendations..." and then Oz's boss could make informed decisions on how Oz needs to prioritize develment goals.

[161488303349]

my observation of watching linden since SL started has led me to a conclusion. dunno if is right or wrong. just seems like to me

in the linden company is a philosophical tenet that everything they do is founded on. a tenet that Philip Linden established in the beginning. the tenet is that art direction of SL is the preogative of the users. is for the users only to determine this. the company will only provide tools. since Rodvik came then the company has moved back to this core philosophy

at times the company staff tear themselves apart over this down the years. leading to resignations. sackings even sometimes

+

the lack of direction provided by the company is often portrayed/seen by us as a codey versus director battle. is the wrong portrayal i think. the difference is philosophical and goes to the core of SL. to uphold the philosophical tenet then linden as a company dont choose any direction for the art that we might make

what we can make is determined by the tools. what we do make is determinded by us. if linden start to make tools that are directed by them to achieve a particular art outcome then the company is now deciding the art. not us the residents

is why the company staff tear themselves apart sometimes. the division in the company is between them that want to influence the art direction of SL and them that want to leave this in our hands

i think that we never going to get a linden avatar 2.0. i think they going to just keep on giving us better tools to make our own. so that we can take the avatars we make in any direction we want. bc of the core philosophical tenet of the linden company

if linden do start directing then SL will just end up like any other game. like predetermined boxes. levels. and grinding it according to a linden directed game/design/art plan

[161488303349]

i add the tl;dr version

+

if was me then i would not make a avatar 2.0 and impose on the world. i would make avatar 2.0 tools. so people can make whatever avatars they want. however they want

i think linden are going to do this