"Standard Sizes"

[Phil Deakins]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

I have my camera just in front of my face.  It is a more immersive experience for me than having it behind me.

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In the open, I would completely agree - if I'd ever tried it

But go into an RL sized 12'x12' furnished room and you can't see well enough to negotiate the furniture, because you can't see the floor just in front of you without the awkwardness of manipulating multiple keys, and even then it's just awkward.

[Phil Deakins]

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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.  I don't have that many items rezzed on my home parcel and I noticed last night that I'm using a lot more prims than would seem normal for the number of items I have rezzed. (Although, it could be my breedable dogs using prims *sighs*  Whyyyyyyyy did I step into that? lol) 

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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.

A lot of gains can be made. I've done it with every item that I sell where both a gain is made and it doesn't interfere with functionality. You can't walk into the open space of a convex hull object, so convex hull is no good for pagodas and 4-poster beds, for instance, but it is good for tables because you don't want to walk under tables.

[Phil Deakins]

Coby. Of course I agree that RL-sized avatars and furniture work in SL in the open. I've never said anything different. I've only ever talked about enclosed RL-sized rooms. It will work well enough in mansion-sized rooms because they are effectively open spaces, but not in typical RL-sized rooms.

I'm not going to go though your long post because it would serve no purpose. We've been through it all before. In the previous long thread on the subject, I even tested it with an actual RL-sized room and bed and I know from that experience that it simply doesn't work. In this thread, you said that the room has to be "slightly bigger" than an RL one, so (1) you agree that it doesn't work with typical RL-sized rooms, and (2) I've asked you more than once to give me the dimensions of a "slightly bigger" room in which it does work, but you haven't done that. I can only guess the reason why you haven't done it - because the room needs to be a lot more that "slightly bigger" and, if that's the case, then my statement that it doesn't work would be correct.

So, until you give me the dimensions of a room in which RL-sized avatars and furniture work without being awkward, so that I can do the test, there is no point in continuing this debate. If you do provide the dimensions, and it turns out to be a mansion-sized room, then my statement that it doesn't work will be shown to be true.

Regardless of the disagreement, the bottom line is that it really doesn't matter either way. Stuff in SL is generally larger than stuff in RL, and there's absolutely no reason why it should not be that way. That's really all there is.

 

ETA: I just want to add:-

(1) Yes, a home with enormous rooms can be made in which RL-sized avatars can move around perfectly well, but that would need a lot more furniture to make the room look right, and it would mean that cosy little typical RL-size rooms couldn't be used.

(2) In order to move around in a typical RL-size furnished room you have to alter you camera's position and use both hands to see what you need to see - look down to see where the corner of the bed is to avoid walking over it, for instance. It's all very awkward and too unnatural a way of seeing in a confined space. If stuff in SL were RL-sized, then it would mean that everyone had to change their camera positions and move in confined spaces in an awkward way. That's not the way SL is and any attempt to make it that way is totally pointless because SL works very well the way it is by default.

(3) People often say that SL has a steep learning curve. You suggested making it even steeper by having people, including new users, learn to move using 2 hands and alter the camera position from the default, both of which are things that need instruction on, because it's not obvious how to do them. Why? When the normal way of moving, and the camera default, work perfectly well, why steepen the learning curve?

[Phil Deakins]

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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?

It does seem to matter to you. You are one of an extremely tiny number of people for whom it does matter so, just out of interest, why does it matter to you? Please tell me.

 

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If the lab cared for proper scale [...]

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Why should they? SL is SL. It is not a reflection of RL. SL is a 'world' in its own right. It doesn't have to mimic a different world. It just developes according to its own environment, and there's no reason for it not to do that. The only "proper scale" there is is that which applies to SL - not that which applies to another world.

 

ETA: I realised that you are now talking about scale and not size. Did you mean size when you wrote scale? because we've only been discussing RL and SL sizes. From my SL experience, SL scales are generally the same as RL scales.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

But go into an RL sized 12'x12' furnished room and you can't see well enough to negotiate the furniture, because you can't see the floor just in front of you without the awkwardness of manipulating multiple keys, and even then it's just awkward.

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You can see the floor and the furniture provided that you take the little time to learn how to use mouse and keyboard simultaneously in moving and looking around. Surely anybody will find it awkward if one never had any interest in learning it. After learning it, it will will be a great aid in moving in cramped spaces. Nothing awkward in it. I find it odd that if the only "acceptable" or convenient keys for moving in SL would be the arrow keys or WASD keys. Why to limit oneself to those keyboard movement methods only?

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

But go into an RL sized 12'x12' furnished room and you can't see well enough to negotiate the furniture, because you can't see the floor just in front of you without the awkwardness of manipulating multiple keys, and even then it's just awkward.

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You can see the floor and the furniture provided that you take the little time to learn how to use mouse and keyboard simultaneously in moving and looking around. Surely anybody will find it awkward if one never had any interest in learning it. After learning it, it will will be a great aid in moving in cramped spaces. Nothing awkward in it. I find it odd that if the only "acceptable" or convenient keys for moving in SL would be the arrow keys or WASD keys. Why to limit oneself to those keyboard movement methods only?

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It's just not on that everyone needs to move using 2 hands when they can move perfectly well with 1 hand. And negotiating furniture in a 12'x12' room really is awkward even with 2 hands and a repositioned camera - so awkward that it's very fair to say that it just doesn't work when compared to the SL we have now where accurate one-handed furniture negotiation, with the default cam position, is so very very easy.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Coby. Of course I agree that RL-sized avatars and furniture work in SL in the open. I've never said anything different. I've only ever talked about enclosed RL-sized rooms. It will work well enough in mansion-sized rooms because they are effectively open spaces, but not in typical RL-sized rooms.

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RL sized avatars and furniture will work also in rooms. Why are you stuck with that statement about RL sized rooms to support your view that RL sized avatars do not work in rooms? I have said that avatars - in general - will need bigger rooms in SL than in RL. The point is that smaller avatars will need smaller furniture and smaller rooms than big avatars. And that has its benefits.

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

In this thread, you said that the room has to be "slightly bigger" than an RL one, so (1) you agree that it doesn't work with typical RL-sized rooms, and (2) I've asked you more than once to give me the dimensions of a "slightly bigger" room in which it does work, but you haven't done that. I can only guess the reason why you haven't done it - because the room needs to be a lot more that "slightly bigger" and, if that's the case, then my statement that it doesn't work would be correct.

So, until you give me the dimensions of a room in which RL-sized avatars and furniture work without being awkward, so that I can do the test, there is no point in continuing this debate. If you do provide the dimensions, and it turns out to be a mansion-sized room, then my statement that it doesn't work will be shown to be true.

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Actually there are RL sized rooms available in SL.  I have visited in some and it does work - but it needs that you will need to know how to move and cam around at the same time and that you have adjusted your camera properly. But if you find those too awkward to learn and use, then your test has only proved that the default camera position and using only keyboard to move are very inefficient ways in small spaces.

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Regardless of the disagreement, the bottom line is that it really doesn't matter either way. Stuff in SL is generally larger than stuff in RL, and there's absolutely no reason why it should not be that way. That's really all there is.

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Building in prims the size does not matter concerning land impact. One prim has always the same land impact regardless of its size. For mesh objects the size matters - the bigger the mesh is the bigger is the land impact. So there definiterly is a very good reason to design to RL scale instead of making things "generally larger" than in RL.

With mesh arrival it's the time to let go from that historical over large building style. If you were designing in mesh (which I know you don't do) you would very quickly learn the fact that smaller is better than big. Surely people having small land are concerned how much land impact each object what they put on their land will cause.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

It does seem to matter to you. You are one of an extremely tiny number of people for whom it does matter so, just out of interest,

why

does it matter to you? Please tell me.

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Because of mesh, the size matters. It matters a lot concerning land impact.

 

I think your saying "extremely tiny number of people" is not correct. There are lots of peole designing mesh objects and they do know very well that size does matter.

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

It is an extremely tiny number of people who seriously want SL sizes to match RL sizes. Mesh wasn't the reason in the previous thread, so what is your reason?

You seem reluctant to provide the dimensions of a suitable "slightly bigger" than RL room. Until you do, there is no point in continuing the discussion. Words are just words. The proof either way is to be found in an actual furnished room, and I want to test your "slightly bigger" room. I don't mind if it's your own SL home but the proof is in the bricks and mortar, so to speak, so let's see it. Put you room where your mouth is

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

It's just not on that everyone needs to move using 2 hands when they can move perfectly well with 1 hand. And negotiating furniture in a 12'x12' room really is awkward even with 2 hands and a repositioned camera - so awkward that it's very fair to say that it just doesn't work when compared to the SL we have now where accurate one-handed furniture negotiation, with the default cam position, is so very very easy.

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After using long time a better more natural lower camera position the default "from top of a tree view" looks really strange and ugly. It distorts the perspective, vertical lines are not vertical but tilted. The default view could be one reason for "grasshopper leg" syndrome one sees very often. And it is could be also reason for "to build big". Because looking from the top of the tree everything looks too small unless made big.

The very, very easy is not always the best way of moving about and seeing around. Learning and using more advanced ways is not awkward at all.

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

RL sized avatars and furniture will work also in rooms. Why are you stuck with that statement about RL sized rooms to support your view that RL sized avatars do not work in rooms? I have said that avatars - in general - will need bigger rooms in SL than in RL. The point is that smaller avatars will need smaller furniture and smaller rooms than big avatars. And that has its benefits.

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The reason I talk about RL-sized rooms is because that's what YOU claim, except that, in this thread, you've said that the rooms do need to be "slightly bigger" - slightly. Of course RL-size avatars and furniture will work ok in big rooms. That's never been in dispute. The only thing that's been in dispute is the claim that they work well in RL-size rooms, and, in this thread, "slightly bigger" than RL-size rooms - "slightly". You now seem to have conveniently  dropped the word "slightly".

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Actually there are RL sized rooms available in SL.  I have visited in some and it does work - but it needs that you will need to know how to move and cam around at the same time and that you have adjusted your camera properly. But if you find those too awkward to learn and use, then your test has only proved that the default camera position and using only keyboard to move are very inefficient ways in small spaces..

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Yes I know there are RL-size rooms in SL Jo Yardley (Berlin) says she does them. But I keep pointing out that they don't work, even with 2-handed movement and drastically altered camera position. It's *still* to awkward negotiating the furniture without bumping into it or walking over it.

My test included changing the cam to the position that was stated in the previous thread, and using 2 hands. I did all that, and it doesn't work in a 12'x12' furnished room. Of course you can stay in the room and blunder your way around it, but that's not the same as it working.

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Building in prims the size does not matter concerning land impact. One prim has always the same land impact regardless of its size. For mesh objects the size matters - the bigger the mesh is the bigger is the land impact. So there definiterly is a very good reason to design to RL scale instead of making things "generally larger" than in RL.

With mesh arrival it's the time to let go from that historical over large building style. If you were designing in mesh (which I know you don't do) you would very quickly learn the fact that smaller is better than big. Surely people having small land are concerned how much land impact each object what they put on their land will cause.

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Then don't use mesh buildings. I don't have any experience at all of mesh - not even as a user of it - but I can't imagine any benefit in having mesh buildings. A few LI/prims maybe, but so what? It's just not worth it. Mesh parts of buildings, perhaps, but not whole buildings. Surely mesh is best suited to smaller objects. So I don't accept mesh buildings as a valid reason for reducing the size of avatars to RL sizes, when it screws up the default way of moving around in SL. With your mesh building logic, you ought to be pushing for smaller-than-RL avatars

In all honesty, I believe that you want RL-size avatars and furniture, as in the previous thread, simply because that's what you like, and that mesh isn't the reason - it wasn't mentioned in the previous thread.

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

It's just not on that everyone needs to move using 2 hands when they can move perfectly well with 1 hand. And negotiating furniture in a 12'x12' room really is awkward even with 2 hands and a repositioned camera - so awkward that it's very fair to say that it just doesn't work when compared to the SL we have now where accurate one-handed furniture negotiation, with the default cam position, is so very very easy.

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After using long time a better more natural lower camera position the default "from top of a tree view" looks really strange and ugly. It distorts the perspective, vertical lines are not vertical but tilted. The default view could be one reason for "grasshopper leg" syndrome one sees very often. And it is could be also reason for "to build big". Because looking from the top of the tree everything looks too small unless made big.

The very, very easy is not always the best way of moving about and seeing around. Learning and using more advanced ways is not awkward at all.

 

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I haven't suggested that there isn't a better camera position. I've only said that, regardless of what camera position is set, a typical RL-size room and furniture doesn't work in SL - not without it being far too awkward, and therefore it doesn't work.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

It is an extremely tiny number of people who seriously want SL sizes to match RL sizes.

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How do you know?

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Mesh wasn't the reason in the previous thread, so what is your reason?

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Mesh is one big reason to build to RL scale.  So why not make avatars and prim builds the same too?

(Can't mesh be included here for reason because it was not the reason in previous thread?) :smileysurprised:

 

Other reasons:

There is no real reason to build "to larger SL sizes" just because it has been the dominant practise been so far.

The point is: meter is a meter everywhere. Stating otherwise is ignorance.

 

Not building to scale - using something else as reference point (random avatar size, random furniture size, random building size) instead of the meter, leads and has lead to the rampant scale issues in SL. The meter as a reference point in designing things is exact - all other reference points possibly used in designing are random, not defined accurately.

 

[Phil Deakins]

I can only judge by the number of people in the forum who support RL sizes all round, including in this thread.

I accept that mesh is a reason for reducing the size of things, but not to RL sizes - just smaller, even if they are smaller than RL. RL size is too arbitrary, and for no valid reason.

The real reason for making things larger than RL is the default camera position. As long as that doesn't change, things need to be larger.

No. a meter is not a meter everywhere - in RL, yes, but not in virtual worlds. A meter is what a virtual world says it is. But even if you insist that an SL meter is the same as a real meter, it doesn't make a scrap of difference. Things are bigger in SL. As far as mesh is concerned, forget the meter altogether. Just make things suitably sized for SL. That's all that's necessary. The meter is totally unnecessary in SL as a measure for making things. The only thing that matters is avatar heights.

 

Btw, where are the dimensions I keep asking for?

 

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

Then don't use mesh buildings. I don't have any experience at all of mesh - not even as a user of it - but I can't imagine any benefit in having mesh buildings. A few LI/prims maybe, but so what? It's just not worth it. Mesh parts of buildings, perhaps, but not whole buildings. Surely mesh is best suited to smaller objects. So I don't accept mesh buildings as a valid reason for reducing the size of avatars to RL sizes, when it screws up the default way of moving around in SL. With your mesh building logic, you ought to be pushing for smaller-than-RL avatars

In all honesty, I believe that you want RL-size avatars and furniture, as in the previous thread, simply because that's what you like, and that mesh isn't the reason - it wasn't mentioned in the previous thread.

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You really should study things about mesh, so that you would understand its benefits over prim designs.

It's not a question of only few saved land impacts. Properly built mesh looks more detailed, more beautiful than similar prim design. And indeed if it is built with skill it can have lot less land impact than prim design. So building to RL sizes with mesh has very good reason.

But I don't want to derail this thread too far to other subject (i.e. mesh). :smileywink:

 

PS.

Hey! Reducing avatars to RL sizes does not screw up the default way of moving in SL. Where did you get that idea?

 

Making smaller avatars than RL humans just would throw the scaling problem in SL to other side of the fence! :smileyindifferent:

 

 

 Edit:

Corrected "through" to "throw" :smileyindifferent:

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

As you said, reducing avatars to RL sizes doesn't screw up the default way of moving, but it does when furniture and therefore rooms are also made to RL sizes.

Anyway, we seem to petering out a bit on this side topic. Just know that I still love you, even though you do fit in my pocket 

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

No. a meter is not a meter everywhere - in RL, yes, but not in virtual worlds. A meter is what a virtual world says it is. But even if you insist that an SL meter is the same as a real meter, it doesn't make a scrap of difference. Things are bigger in SL. As far as mesh is concerned, forget the meter altogether. Just make things suitably sized for SL. That's all that's necessary. The meter is totally unnecessary in SL as a measure for making things. The only thing that matters is avatar heights.

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Meter is a meter everywhere. Why it should be any different in virtual worlds? What would be great idea an innovation behind that?

What you are actually doing is that you base your feeling of proper size of things in SL to a random avatar size instead of the exact meter.

 

By the way, what has been the exact avatar height you have used as a reference point when you have made all your designs?  Is it just the avatr size what you have randomly chosen to use? Or is it something else. How did you decide to use that avatar height as reference in building stuff?

Didn't you use any other measurements at all (meter, inches, feet) in building? Just eyeballing things in reference to the randomly chosen avatar size?

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

Anyway, we seem to petering out a bit on this side topic. Just know that I still love you

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:heart:  :smileywink:

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

Meter is a meter everywhere. Why it should be any different in virtual worlds? What would be great idea an innovation behind that?

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Like a dollar is a dollar everywhere?

 

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What you are actually doing is that you base your feeling of proper size of things in SL to a random avatar size instead of the exact meter.

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Yes. Avatar heights dictate the size of objects. Meters are irrelevant.

 

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By the way, what has been the exact avatar height you have used as a reference point when you have made all your designs?  Is it just the avatr size what you have randomly chosen to use? Or is it something else. How did you decide to use that avatar height as reference in building stuff?

Didn't you use any other measurements at all (meter, inches, feet) in building? Just eyeballing things in reference to the randomly chosen avatar size?

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I used my own avatar - not any measurements of any kind. In my early times I used to get around and meet lots of people, and I set my av to a typical height - not the tallest and not the shortest. I made my furniture to generally suit that height. As you probably know, it sold enormously well, so it wasn't a bad way of deciding the sizes. But furniture can't be made to suit all avs. The tallest ones necessarily have their feet in the floor when default sitting on a sofa, for instance, and the shorter ones have their feet above the floor.

Once I decided to make a bed according to RL sizes but it was way too short for most avs and I abandoned the idea. There might be a market for making specifically RL size furniture, if there aren't already such specialists, but it would a minority market.

 

ETA:

Also, remember that typical SL rooms are much larger than typical RL rooms, so furniture does need to be similarly bigger or it will look way too small in typical SL rooms. I actually tried that and an RL-sized sofa, for instance, is lost against a typical SL room wall. It looks so tiny. So a balance has to be arrived at where room, furniture and avatar look right together, and the basis for that is the avatar height.

[Coby Foden]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

Like a dollar is a dollar everywhere?

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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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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

Yes. Avatar heights dictate the size of objects. Meters are irrelevant.

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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.

 

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

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.

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.

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

So a balance has to be arrived at where room, furniture and avatar look right together, and the basis for that is the avatar height.

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What you are saying is that you have found a sweet spot in avatar size - to which reference sized things look right. Or you you might be confident that the avatar size what YOU have chosen as a reference point is perfect for SL world.

However, for RL sized avatar it is perfectly possible to make the same matching - everything would look right.

(And we would save in LI in smaller mesh objects.)

I consider the eyeballing method of building thing to virtual world very bad paractice beacause it will lead to inconsistent scale of things. As you can clearly see what has happened in SL. Strangely for some reason it has not happened in any games though. Isn't it amazing? Only in SL, Inworldz and similar places the scale and sizing of things has run out of hand.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Meters are irrelevant.

 the basis for that is the avatar height.

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This thread is going about as well as I anticipated. There's a lot of gems.

Pray tell, when producing commercial furniture or vehicles (specifically anything with animations/poseballs), what avatar height should be used? 50? 70? The height of the builder? The height of all SL avatars divided by the number of avatars? Should midgets, furries, quadrupeds and mecha avatars be forced to include a disclaimer on their products?

Does it matter if feet are floating above the ground when they shouldn't? Does it matter if cushions are sixteen times the size of the avatars butt? How about if lower legs are intersecting the seat?

Should two avatars of near-equal height end up meeting lips-to-lips in a kiss, or should they reach up to the neck? Should cars fill multiple lanes of a highway? How tall should car tyres be, and does it matter if people poke out of the sunroof?

Are all of these problems simply 'accidents' because there's no way to tell what size any object is? Do commercial creators really have no obligation to provide anything but some subjective standard of perspective, based on LL's hilarious choice for default camera placement and a value that can shift between 16 apples and 32 apples tall? A small city car could be anywhere from 5 to 20 elbows long, depending on both the elbow of the customer and the elbow of the creator.

There's probably no correlation between triangular torsos, small heads and short, 't-rex' arms commonly seen in SL and the half-birds-eye camera perspective given to new users. No-one ever shakes their head and walks away from SL because of how inconsistant and amateurly-constructed everything looks at first glance. Mainland is a finely cut jewel of sensibly-sized builds. There's no harm caused by needing up to 25% (actually, it could be up to 100%) more space just to build the same (perspective-wise) structures, and who cares about tier prices anyway.

Or, maybe there's a standard measurement we could use to make this less complicated for people who want any kind of accuracy. Something like... umm... well let's call it a mitre, and say it's  maybe... twice the height of a prim cube when first rezzed.

Just an idea.

[Coby Foden]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Meters are irrelevant.

 

the basis for that is the avatar height.

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Should cars fill multiple lanes of a highway?

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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.

Those cars have been built by somebody, possibly by using their 2.6 meter tall avatar as a reference. Random size avatar as a reference; the result: random sized, out of consistent scale, vehicles.

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

What people are trying to do here is to get people to change the measuring stick that was used from the beginning for content creation, the original Avatar to a different measuring stick, the SL Meter.

I will agree it's a good idea.  But how to get there with out another act of the Linden God is something I have no idea how to do. 

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I guess that Linden Lab will do nothing towards consistent realistic scale in SL. It appears that they just don't care. Good example is the builds made by moles, all the objects, even made fairlyrecently, are still made for giants. If the lab cared for proper scale surely they would have instructed the moles to build to a scale that would be good for average normal sized human avatars. And they would have taken care that the recent fairly new starter human avatars would have been sized according to the average RL human sizes.

I think the downsizing of avatars will happen gradually over the time naturally. As more and more mesh objects and houses are coming to market people will notice that smaller is better; smaller means less land impact. This will gradually lead to a situation where there will be more demand for smaller things - towards RL scale. And that will also give reason to make avatars smaller.

Thus the end result over time will be that people will understand that the meter is the only valid measuring stick in making content and that building to RL scale is a very good thing.

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See, I don't  think this is a "new" issue.  It's been around since the beginning:

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/120/4d/7240/1.html#post54400

That is when it should have been fixed. 

I think they, both the Lindens and the Residents, just did not see the long term ramifications.

Some of us feel that we are seeing a trend toward shorter Ava's.  I know I have shortened mine several inches over the past couple of years.  But if I make the jump down to "RL Scale" I get dwarfed by the Environment.

If LL suddenly started supplying RL Scaled Ava's, we'd have all the Newbies popping in here saying, "Why the fark am I so small?"  Still, it would be a very good thing if LL supplied better Ava's.

What is daunting is that in order to change the measuring stick from the original Ava to the SL Meter is that there are around 30,000 SIMS worth of content and only the Linden Gods really know how many millions of Ava's who log in to "fix."

Is it possible to develop an algorithm that could be applied universally to the entire grid and the problem be fixed with the flick of a switch?

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.

[Phil Deakins]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Meters are irrelevant.

 

the basis for that is the avatar height.

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Should cars fill multiple lanes of a highway?

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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.

Those cars have been built by somebody, possibly by using their 2.6 meter tall avatar as a reference. Random size avatar as a reference; the result: random sized, out of consistent scale, vehicles. 

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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.

[Coby Foden]

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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: