"Standard Sizes"

[Freya Mokusei]

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Coby Foden wrote:

This reminds me that Phil does think that AnnMarie Otoole's cars are too big for the roads.  So Phil does see the problem in oversized, randomly sized, builds there, but for some reason he refuses to see the problem in other areas of too large (i.e built by eyeballing with no reference to meter at all) builds in SL.

 

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I'm entirely not surprised, I would say the same is true for almost everyone in SL. As Phil says, the number of people who vocally care about this issue is small. But how many people wander into massive doorways, or try and crouch under other doorways, or fail to hug or kiss properly, or have to fiddle around so that prim bits don't poke out of the backs of heads, bellies, backs, whatever.

This issue is seen by thousands every day, I would say that most people either just assume SL is supposed to look like a group of 5 year-olds built it (as is considered the typical view of Mainland), or they adapt by skewing their avatars proportions (I've known several people who, in lieu of an 'whole avatar scale' slider, would just turn into squat little trolls so that they'd fit into bed with their lovers) or some other coping mechanism. I try to modify the z-height offset to give some approximation of a realistic fit when animations have clearly been built for stretched-out giants, but this is a poor solution that only works in one dimension.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

There is no semblance of size consistency with AnnMarie's vehicles. Some are sized to suit the roads and others are sized much too big for the roads and too big for the average avatar.

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Which clearly proves that building by eyballing things is a very bad choice. :smileytongue:

[Freya Mokusei]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

There is no semblance of size consistency with AnnMarie's vehicles. Some are sized to suit the roads and others are sized much too big for the roads and too big for the average avatar.

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Which clearly proves that building by eyballing things is a very bad choice. :smileytongue:

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And thus, we have irony!

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

Uff... Phil! Extremely bad choice of comparison. :smileytongue:

Those different dollars are clearly defined each what is their value in other monetary units. Have you ever seen anywhere definitions like "this meter here is this many of that other meter over there"? I think not. So

meter is a meter anywhere

is still valid even though you for some strange reason don't accept this simple fact. But that's your choice.

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It's not a bad choice for comparison. Nobody in Australia even talks about Australian dollars in Australia. They are just dollars, as they are in every country that uses that word for its currency, and it was with the RL meter. And, to repeat my point, there is no reason in existence why a meter in SL must be the same as a meter somewhere else. Also, to repeat another of my points, meters don't even come into it. They are irrelevant to the size of avatars, furniture and buildings in SL. They have to be irrelevant. The only measure that matters is general avatar height. If everything is made according to that, then everything fits together very nicely.

Try to see past the RL meter and see SL as SL and not an extension of RL, Coby. SL is not RL, it's not an extension of RL, and SL devlopes according to its own environment. There is no reason in the virtual world to insist that it developes according to the RL environment. If you really want to have SL behaving as RL, consider this. SL has lower gravity than RL, so SL beings are bound to grow taller than their RL counterparts. You don't believe that SL has lower gravity? Log in and press the PgUp key (jump). See how long it takes to go up and down. It's much more like the moon than Earth, so the gravity in SL is much lower than in RL.

 

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So you have just been randomly eyballing things against randomly chosen avatr size. Then some other designers use some other randomly chosen avatar size to base their designs on. Now wonder the scale of things is so inconsistent in SL. Some builder's things might be 1.5 times larger than in RL, some designers things might be two times larger than in RL.

Eyeballs are what matter and, since my furniture sold extremely well, eyeballs did a very good job. There is no way you can realistically argue against that fact.

 

Do you see this as a good thing for SL in general? The rampant inconsistent scale of things?

I don't see it either way. I just made furniture that suited the average avatar height and, I assume, so did all the other furniture makers. And it has always worked very well. In SL we get some people who make unusually small avatars and some who make unusually big ones. So what? unusually small and big real people look wrong on RL furniture. RL people don't have any choice but SL avatars do, and they choose to have unusual heights. It's their own choice.

And, btw, if someone had laid down standard sizes for avatars, and we made furniture to suit those standard sizes, what would have happened? The same that happened to the very topic of this thread? I.e. standard sized becoming unreliable? No no no. SL has always been "your world, your imagination". It has

never

been "your world, your imagination, as long as everything is RL-sized. Get over it. You are a tiny minority. Everyone else is happy with the way sizes are in SL.

 

As I have said the only reliable accurate reference point is the meter. That's the unit chosen by Linden Lab for SL dimensions. They did not create their own unit not related to anything. There is a very good reason for that.

Completely untrue. The meter has no relevance whatsoever to avatar heights and, therefore, furniture and building sizes. Actual avatar heights are the only measuring stick for furniture and buildings. I'm beginning to wonder if you are persevering with your arguments because you like having my attention

 

They could have named the unit as LD (Linden unit). A region could have been 812 x 812 LD. Default avatar size could have been 4.45 LD. And so on. Well, if LD was the unit, what would be the proper drinking glass size, vehicle size, chair size, room and house size for the avatar? It would have been toatally guess work as there wouldn't have been any reference point to RL dimensions at all. Just eyeballing things against 4.45 LD avatar. Really weird and confusing. I guess the scale of things with LD unit would have been even more rampant and varied than it is now.

See above,

---

 

[Phil Deakins]

Freya. You asked a lot of questions and gave no answers. I'm not going to answer the question because all you were getting at is that the meter is relevant to avatar heights and, therefore, buildings and furniture sizes. It is not. Avatars come in all shapes and sizes. It's not like the real world where people vary in heights but almost always within a relatively small range. In SL the range is much larger so nothing can be made a standard to suit them all.

You asked about feet in the floor, in the air, and lower legs inside seats. It's not possible for a furniture maker to avoid it, due to the greatly varying sizes of avatars. In RL, the floor/air problem is avoided by raising the knees. That can't be done in SL. Legs don't go into RL furniture and they just rest where they lay. That can't be done in SL either. It's ridiculous to suggest that SL furniture should work the same as RL furniture in those respects. Using the meter exactly as an RL meter wouldn't change any of that, so it's pointless you even mentioning it.

The absolute is that general avatar heights, not meters, dictate 'mass produced' furniture and building sizes. There is no way round it. It's an absolute.

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

I don't mean to sound like a pessimist here.  I am optimistic that over time things will continue to improve.  But we sadly have a long way to go.

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I'm also optimistic that things will improve by itself - over a long period of time. The reason being mesh objects. RL scale is better than to build oversized due to land impact. The more RL sized stuff appears to the grid the better. Avatar sizes will gradually follow the trend to go down to more realistic (i.e. RL) sizes.

After many years we can go to historical sites in SL and wonder "Why on earth everything was so huge earlier? Did some alien giants roam about here?".  :smileywink:

 

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Things may improve, RL sized avatars isn't an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. If there is an improvement over time, it will be that LI is kept down by the use of smaller objects. That's all. As a consequence, avatar height may also be reduced. But it's the LI that will be an improvement, not avatar heights.

Your idea of matching RL and SL is blown right out of the water by the large difference in their gravities. Because of gravity, SL people should be taller than RL people. That's if you want RL realism, of course

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

There is no semblance of size consistency with AnnMarie's vehicles. Some are sized to suit the roads and others are sized much too big for the roads and too big for the average avatar.

---

Which clearly proves that building by eyballing things is a very bad choice. :smileytongue:

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No. It proves that Annemarie's vehicles are very inconsistently sized. Eyeballing the general avatar size is excellent for making furniture and buildings to fit the general avatar size

[Freya Mokusei]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Try to see past the RL meter and see SL as SL and not an extension of RL, Coby. SL is not RL, it's not an extension of RL, and SL devlopes according to its own environment. There is no reason in the virtual world to insist that it developes according to the RL environment. If you really want to have SL behaving as RL, consider this. SL has lower gravity than RL, so SL beings are bound to grow taller than their RL counterparts. You don't believe that SL has lower gravity? Log in and press the PgUp key (jump). See how long it takes to go up and down. It's much more like the moon than Earth, so the gravity in SL is much lower than in RL.

 

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Can't tell if trolling.

SL gravity is actually the same as in RL. Your perception of gravity (in your example jumping) is deliberately skewed so that avatars can jump much higher than they could in reality. Mass still falls at the same speed in SL, as it does in RL. It has nothing to do with jump strength or avatar mass (which remains a constant in SL, unlike IRL).

Obviously, also, meters have nothing to do with gravity.

[Phil Deakins]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

Can't tell if trolling.

SL gravity is actually the same as in RL. Your perception of gravity (in your example jumping) is deliberately skewed so that avatars can jump much higher than they could in reality. Mass still falls at the same speed in SL, as it does in RL. It has nothing to do with jump strength or avatar mass (which remains a constant in SL, unlike IRL).

Obviously, also, meters have nothing to do with gravity.

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Trolling? I started this thread. How can I be trolling?

Try the jump in both SL and RL. See how long a jump takes to land in both. SL gravity is much lower than RL gravity. It doesn't affect the length of a meter, of course, and I didn't suggest that it did, but it does mean that, if SL were a real planet, people would be taller than they are on the Earth and, therefore, avatar heights should be taller than real people.

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

I don't mean to sound like a pessimist here.  I am optimistic that over time things will continue to improve.  But we sadly have a long way to go.

---

I'm also optimistic that things will improve by itself - over a long period of time. The reason being mesh objects. RL scale is better than to build oversized due to land impact. The more RL sized stuff appears to the grid the better. Avatar sizes will gradually follow the trend to go down to more realistic (i.e. RL) sizes.

After many years we can go to historical sites in SL and wonder "Why on earth everything was so huge earlier?

Did some alien giants roam about here?".  :smileywink:

 

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You may be able to do that in the future (think why was everything so huge), but everything doesn't look huge right now. Everything looks about right. It's only when you pedantically compare it to an RL meter that you think it's huge when in fact it all looks about right as compared with the real world. Meters don't actually show. Of course, you have chosen to have a very small avatar so things do look huge with you at the side of them, but most avatars are bigger and it all looks perfectly normal. It's your choice to have an unusually small avatar. Most users choose to have an average one.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Try the jump in both SL and RL. See how long a jump takes to land in both. SL gravity is much lower than RL gravity. It doesn't affect the length of a meter, of course, and I didn't suggest that it did, but it does mean that, if SL were a real planet, people would be taller than they are on the Earth and, therefore, avatar heights should be taller than real people.

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Gravity is the same. (Oh what's that you want a source*?) Jumping is not how you test gravity (you'll get too easily confused with propulsion and misleading mass, and also the discrepancy between the agent bounding box and the avatar itself), use physics with an object that reports its mass, or take a gradeschool class in physics.

I can't address your comments on height vs. gravity vs. Earth and remain within the forum guidelines. I have no idea why your brain is telling you to type these things.

I am trying to remain as polite as possible, you seem like a reasonably high-functioning adult human. There must be some reason why you don't understand this particular set of concepts.

*Note also that object by default have a gravity multiplier of 1.0 (i notice the source doesn't say this), this can be changed by script.

[Phil Deakins]

In some respects maybe gravity is the same, but jump and gravity is definitely much lower in SL. Perhaps it's just poor design but it's there. I don't believe that SL was ever meant to religiously mimic RL, so gravity behaving differently in different situations really doesn't matter.

My brain tells me that on low gravity worlds, things grow taller. It may be telling me wrong, but it does seem like sense. It doesn't matter anyway. SL != RL. It's plain old common sense, and that's all there is.

There is no reason to suppose that the SL meter is the same as the RL meter and, even if it's seen as identical, there is absolutely no reason to insist that things in SL are sized the same as things in RL. Simples

If it helps, I'll go along with RL and SL meters being identical, even though it is a totally unnecessary consideration. As I've been saying, meters don't a look in when sizing furniture and buildings. It's only general avatar heights that count.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

In some respects maybe gravity is the same,

but jump and gravity is definitely much lower in SL

. Perhaps it's just poor design but it's there. I don't believe that SL was ever meant to religiously mimic RL, so

gravity behaving differently in different situations

really doesn't matter.

My brain tells me that on low gravity worlds, things grow taller. It may be telling me wrong, but it does seem like sense. It doesn't matter anyway. SL != RL. It's plain old common sense, and that's all there is.

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WHAAAAAAAT.

People jump higher in SL than in RL, this does not affect gravity. It is to do with impulse applied by the agent, and done deliberately so that people can jump to 'inhuman' heights and move to places they wouldn't be able to get to if SL were RL.

Gravity is the same, gravity is the same, gravity IS THE SAME. People grow the same height!

[Phil Deakins]

Oh for goodness sakes - do it! Jump in SL and jump in RL. Forget the height achieved. Just look at how fast you come down in RL and how slow, by comparison, you come down in SL. Gravity is NOT the same in all circumstances. Your eyeballs will show you that.

Forget gravity if you like. It only occurred to me a few minutes ago. Instead, tell me why SL sizes should match RL sizes. You seem to be arguing on that side, so tell me.

Also, if SL is deliberately designed so that people can jump to non-RL heights, why the insistence on everything being the same as RL? It doesn't make any sense at all.

[Ceka Cianci]

I always liked Philip Linden..He always looked at the posabilities and things that could be..

to break away from the rules of society and see what all of our imaginations could come up with..

as well as how much RL would we achieve in a virtualworld..

it's a place for both..

 

[Freya Mokusei]

I don't see the reasoning in arguing about perception. Gravity is the same, I have measured it personally through falling velocity of both avatar and prim. Physics are server-side, eyeballs will mislead you for reasons I can keep adding to forever.

I don't think things 'must' be equivilent to RL sizes, size is not the issue, scale is.

 

• If a human adult avatar sits in a car, they should expect to sit inside it and be able to reach the pedals.
• If a quadrupedal canine walks alongside a human, it should expect not to be able to reach as high as the standing human could.
• A 'Hellboy'-esque demon should be taller than a 'Gollum'-sized... I don't know what Gollum is.
• A hug that is designed to go around the shoulders, should go around the shoulders (provided the avatars are at the height anticipated by the animator - what I'm talking about is that people should realise that different heights here are necessary).

The scale issue is easily confused, as it has been several times in this thread (and literally every other size thread, this is why I'm pretty sure my typing here is a waste of time). It has nothing to do with cameras, nothing to do with gravity. Nothing to do with whether you can see your feet or whether the field of view is 90 degrees or 180 degrees, perspective, or any of that.

Nothing in SL should be the same as it is in RL, but scale should be consistant.

See, right now, people might set their heights to 100 so that they look reasonably large on their screen. They might set their shoulders wide, to make their body appear in proportion with the near-birds-eye view. Neither of these are solutions to the problem they're seeing, but they do it anyway. The problem with this is that the user (let's say she's a young woman) doesn't want to be considered of 'super model' proportions, they don't want to be a 'glamazon' - they just want to be larger on their screen, however any user who is looking at them will see a giant, especially if they understand perspective and scale. It is an accident caused by poor perceptions given by the viewer.

I'm not a scientist or an arcitect, I just observe. I'm pretty jaded toward how SL looks, and I don't think there's a million people who will sign up if this issue were to go away. I don't have an agenda in the shapes or building or furniture markets, and I don't reaaaaally care what standards people build to. It's just annoying that people can't see this and how it affects day-to-day SL in a negative way.

[Phil Deakins]

I've never heard of that AvaStar newspaper. I wonder if it's still going.

[Ceka Cianci]

those are both pretty old videos..i couldn't tell you..

i just like going back to them from time to time..just hearing how cool all the things they were finding to be..

all the cool posabilities..and people so interested in other peoples ideas..

then seeing what we have now..so many ideas out there that we don't have enough timein the day to just try theones already thought up hehehe

i just feel that the limits shoudl be ours to decide..not a group of other people..

peer pressure should stay in the RL and relaxing freedom in this one..

otherwise we end up escaping back to the real world and getting the hell out of this one to relax hehehe

 

[Phil Deakins]

Ok. Forget gravity. It was just something that occurred to me when I was writing a post to Coby. And I only mentioned it to show that SL is not the same as RL.

This bit of your post stopped me from reading the rest:-

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

I don't think things 'must' be equivilent to RL sizes, size is not the issue,

scale

is.

.

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The rest of your post qualified that statement, so I didn't read it because the statement is wrong. Size IS the issue in this debate. Scale never was. It's only been about size. Hence Coby's argument about the length of the meter being identical in both worlds. So you're arguing about the wrong thing here. I don't have any views about scale so, if you really want to discuss it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd start a seperate thread for it.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

There is no reason in the virtual world to insist that it developes according to the RL environment.

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Can't tell if trolling.

SL gravity is actually the same as in RL. Your perception of gravity (in your example jumping) is deliberately skewed so that avatars can jump much higher than they could in reality. Mass still falls at the same speed in SL, as it does in RL. It has nothing to do with jump strength or avatar mass (which remains a constant in SL, unlike IRL).

Obviously, also, meters have nothing to do with gravity.

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Just because someone has an opinion one disagrees with at every level. Even an opinion one might find very unfounded...

Doesn't make it a trolling - if the person is putting forth an argument and making solid claims - take that for what it is. I may think he's totally wrong throughout this discussion - but he's always been ont to put out an opinion that appeared to be his actual stance, and often had his reasoning with it.

This phrase 'trolling' gets tossed around way too loosely these days, and makes the stance of the person who tosses it out very weak. Its a way of attacking your opponent rather than their argument...

 

For the record: I like that size is scaling down, I use a 'to scale' avatar and have builds that are scaled down, and builds that are large. My own home has large walls but scaled down furniture - intentionall chosen for effect to look like a large open space when my 'to scale' avatar is inside (7m tall floors, 4 floors, side of a near-cliff). I agree that scaling down is getting more common due to mesh - I posted a blog on this in 2011 I think, and its been well read:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/category/second-life/reducing-prim-costs/

I like standard sizes as a 'lesser of multiple evils' compromise solution... It works... well enough... but it not perfect. Everyone knows its not perfect. I was able to find a size in it that had settings close to my old shape, and conformed to it in 2011. I also have begun noticing some deviation from it in recent clothing - BUT unlike some, I have started tracking which mesh template makers are causing this, and which are holding to the sizes... and learning as a result who to avoid... Sadly some of the offenders have nice looking stuff, but if they won't even tell me what shape dials I need to wear it... the purchase is wasted unless I can figure it out... (and I have for some, and as a result now keep two very similar but not identical shapes - I believe the problem is caused by exactly two template makers... and all I will say if that their templates are lower costs than the others, but not all low cost template makers are offending...).

But its Tuesday after a holiday and I spent all weekend fighting with a company that lost my delivery of about US $3000 worth of furniture... so I'm not in a mood to rationally debate this one today. Today is the day where if I get involved, I will say something stupid. My comments on it from the past are all over the place...

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

i just feel that the limits shoudl be ours to decide..not a group of other people..

peer pressure should stay in the RL and relaxing freedom in this one..

otherwise we end up escaping back to the real world and getting the hell out of this one to relax hehehe 

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I completely agree. I don't think anyone here is insisting that everyone should adopt their view and try to deny individual freedoms to choose limits. As far as I can tell, it's just one person who likes things to be RL sized and I'm arguing that that simply doesn't work. I reckon I won that argument anyway because the other person has declined to give me dimensions of a room in which it does work - the room necessarily being much bigger than a typical RL room

Coby and I don't see eye to eye on it, which is nothing new, but I still see her as a lovely person who I count as a good forum friend, so nothing is changing - not like the old RA days, eh? I've enjoyed the debate though.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

What I want to experiment with is using convex hull on some of my prim furnishings.  I've read a tiny bit on the subject, but have heard (again anecdotal) evidence of people using convex hull (however that is done) on an existing prim-built item, thereby reducing the number of prims/Li.

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Changing an object to Convex Hull is very simple. Get the object in Edit, select the Features tab, click the Physics Shape Type drop-down list and select Convex Hull. Then compare its LI to see if any gains or losses have been made.

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Ah, that sounds easy enough...thank you.

  Question - in one of the threads where this was mentioned, someone said that he used Convex Hull on his house (I'm assuming selecting the entire house and applying Convex Hull) and the amount of prims/Li that he saved.  Based on what you said about open spaces, though, would that be feasible or only on selected parts of the house?

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http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/category/second-life/reducing-prim-costs/

This specific blog:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/meshify-your-world-from-inside-of-second-life-to-save-on-prim-cost-of-houses-and-other-objects/

- Poorly named because at the time I thought this was a conversion to mesh... Its not, its just a conversion to the 'Land Impact' system.

Make sure to test things after you do it. Cut prims and hollow prims can blow up the cost, and unusual shapes can get their collision zones wrong (you can fall through floors, or find invisible walls where there should be a corner or curve).

- I find I had to unlink things when that happened, find the offending prim, and set it back to 'prim', but leave the rest of them linked and convex hull.

It can take a few hours to do all of this in a good sized build, but will shave out 30-50% of your land impact cost... and that just means you can build a whole LOT more...

 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

i just feel that the limits shoudl be ours to decide..not a group of other people..

peer pressure should stay in the RL and relaxing freedom in this one..

otherwise we end up escaping back to the real world and getting the hell out of this one to relax hehehe 

---

I completely agree. I don't think anyone here is insisting that everyone should adopt their view and try to deny individual freedoms to choose limits. As far as I can tell, it's just one person who likes things to be RL sized and I'm arguing that that simply doesn't work. I reckon I won that argument anyway because the other person has declined to give me dimensions of a room in which it does work - the room necessarily being much bigger than a typical RL room

Coby and I don't see eye to eye on it, which is nothing new, but I still see her as a lovely person who I count as a good forum friend, so nothing is changing - not like the old RA days, eh? I've enjoyed the debate though.

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ya that wasn't really aimed at anyone..it's  just something that has existed since i can remember in here..

that's why i like going back to listen to philip talk..he kind of clears my mind of a lot of the clutter that goes on..

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

Ah, that sounds easy enough...thank you.

  Question - in one of the threads where this was mentioned, someone said that he used Convex Hull on his house (I'm assuming selecting the entire house and applying Convex Hull) and the amount of prims/Li that he saved.  Based on what you said about open spaces, though, would that be feasible or only on selected parts of the house?

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I recently 'improved' a gazebo I've been selling for years. It used to have 6 columns but, to reduce the prim/LI count, I replaced the 6 columns with a 4-column 1-prim sculptie - the one I use for table and chair legs - and I made it Convex Hull. Yesterday, a guy IMed me to say that he can sit in it but he can't get out of it. When I checked the display one I couldn't walk into it and I had to change it back.

In all honesty, I can't say if it was the convex hull or the 4-column sculptie that caused it, but one of them certainly did. I'd need to check it out to find out which. You can easily test it though by creating a multi-prim object with inner space that you can walk through, and then set it as convex hull. My memory is poor but I think you'll find that you can no longer walk into its inner space.

[Perrie Juran]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Coby Foden wrote:

I guess that Linden Lab will do nothing towards consistent realistic scale in SL. It appears that they just don't care..

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There's no reason why they should care. It

really

doesn't matter to almost every SL user. SL sizes work well in SL, so who cares that they don't match RL sizes?

 

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Very true.  I have yet to meet someone "in the wild" - meaning not from the forums - who has ever complained about realistic sizes.  I *have* heard a lot of complaints about lag, being Ruthed (yes, it's still happening here and there), gesture spam, receiving unwanted IMs offering teh sexxies, etc., etc. so I don't think the average SL user (who is likely not representative of the average SL forumite) honestly even thinks about this issue.

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Usually they just state something in their profile.

But woe be if you say anything.

I've witnessed a few wall of text rant's that a Redhead could be jealous of.