Avatar Height In Second Life

[Penny Patton]

My own avatar is 5'7", which you might be refering to as "child like" and "inappropriate".

 

I could not disagree more. The height issue in SL stems from a lack of design experience and foresight among the staff at Linden Lab and it is a contributing factor to many problems in SL.

 Ever had an animation not work correctly? A stand pose that leaves your feet either floating over the ground, or sinking into it? A sit pose that leaves you buried? Ever tried to hug or otherwise interact with another avatar via an animation and it just looked awkward and clumsy? Ever had trouble adjusting an attachment to fit? Ever wished you had more land? Ever complained about sim crossings? Ever wish you had more prims? SL's scale problems are directly related to all of these issues and more.

 

Ideally LL would have had an in-house creative team right from the beginning and avoided all of these issues. Instead, it has fallen to the community. So you have a slow, slow trend towards shorter avatars as more content creators come to understand why that is better for their business and their ability to create, while some people pull in the other direction either due to social pressures (their friends are all 8' tall and they want to fit in) or due to weird uniquely SL issues like the "age-play' hysteria.

 

 The topic of how large environments in SL are built are a very good example of why this is a problem. Those who claim smaller avatars "break content" because environments are built for larger avatars need to take closer look at the environments they're referring to. In SL, due largely to SL's poor camera placement, environments (including vehicles, furniture, etcetera) tend to be scaled up to about double-size.

 Avatars are not scaled up nearly this much, the average avatar is scaled up by about 1/3 larger in scale. So they still look tiny in those huge rooms, they still look like a child in those oversized chairs.Shrinking an avatar to a more realistic size does not make this any more noticible than it already is.

 

 Few builds in SL are even very self-consistent with scale, let alone consistent with avatar sizes. Not to mention even among the average avatar there's a height difference of about two feet.Avatars between 6'8" and 8'4" are very common.  Women tending to be substantially shorter than men.

 

 There's also a lot of confusion regarding height even today. I noticed a thread earlier on claiming heights for LL's starter avatars being arounf 5'7" for one of the woman avatars to 6'5" for one of the male avatars. Most likely they were drawing these numbers from an SL attribute named "AgentHeight" which is actually about half a foot shorter than your avatar's actual height. Case in point, the shortest female avatar LL has provided to new residents was 5'9", very few, if any, male avatars have been under 7'. None of the current starter avatars are under 6'8" (the height of  the shortest woman starter avatar).

 

 

Now, to keep things clear, this really should not be a resident problem. Just as it's wrong to call a shorter avatar "inappropriate" because 5'2" seems "childlike" next to a 7' tall avatar, more realistically sized avatars have no business harassing taller avatars. It only makes people more defensive about their avatar choices and solves nothing.

 

 The problem lies with LL. They need some professional designers on staff making appropriate decisions in terms of starter avatars and the tools we use to create and customize our own avatars. In the mean time we should all go with the avatars we are comfortable and happy with. If all your friends are 7' tall or taller and you're not comfortable being "the short one" then don't! Stay with what works for you!

 

If you're not worried about fitting in with your 7' tall friends, maybe your bigger concern is getting the most out of your land, or being able to buold larger, more detailed builds in SL, then you'll probably be happier with a smaller avatar.

 

I do think it's a topic worth talking about. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of misunderstanding. Also, LL has made no moves toward addressing the issue, which is going to continue to hurt them as time goes on, whether they realize it or not.

[Loren Twine]

 

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Marianne Little wrote:

<snip>

Clothes and skin is so important. Compare these 2 pictures. It's the same shape in both. Not a slider touched. To the left, I look like a tween/teen. To the right, I look adult, yes?

 

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Can I ask where the outfit on the left is from?

 

As for me, I'm 1.82m in my adult shape, and 1.44m in my kid shape, when measuring with a prim. RL me is 1.70m (if I'm generous).I'm too lazy to convert.   I usually feel taller avies are more likely to be out of proportion, but maybe that's just because they're more noticeable. *shrugs*

 

[Penny Patton]

Actually, that's an interesting point. Taller avatars are definitely more likely to be out of proportion. The arm slider is a good example. For women of realistic height, the arm slider must be somewhere between about 90 to 100 to make the arms proportional to the body. (Proportional being that the length of your outstretched arms measured fingertip to fingertip should be about equal to your height.)  Sometimes, with a properly scaled and otherwise properly proportioned shape, having the arms at 100 still leaves your arms a little on the short side.

 Stretch your avatar up to 7-8' tall and your arms don't automatically get longer to match. So if your arms are already a little on the short side at 100 when you're 5'5", they will be even shorter if you're 7' tall. This is likely just one contributing factor towards the trend of "T-rex arms" in SL.

[Zim Gunsberg]

When I first came to SL I pretty much eyeballed it. Once I found a measurer that actually gave me my correct prim height, I happily settlled on my current height of 7'6", although I do fluctuate by about 2" plus or minus from time to time.  :smileywink:

 

 

[Kit Young]

I too, prefer realistic heights and usually make ( or choose ) an avatar between 5'4" and 5'10". I am currently 5'6", or so I thought. That is what the height detector in the corner of my bedroom says, the one I use regularly when I try on new shapes. But I recently discovered that like most height detectors in SL it measures Agent height not avatar height. Agent height is measured to the eye sockets not the top of the head. My height as measured against a prim is more like 6'2". I now have a detector I copied from NCI (New Citzens Intnl) that shows both and tells how many scripts you have running at the same time. I also read a very good blog about proportions written by Pussycat Catnap where I discovered my legs were too long and my arms way too short. She also has good information at her shop in world plus a detector that shows real and agent heights. I have made adjustments and my avatar looks much better some how. More realistic I guess. When I started SL in Oct. 2006 there was a height detector on Help Island. I haven't seen one there for years. When people ask why I am so short I whip out a height detector and show them they are near 7" which most of them didn't know.

We should be whatever height we want but we do need better tools so we can make informed choices.

Thanks,

Kit Young

[Jesica Dragovar]

yeah I'm a sucker for realism myself, 5'7 avatar just like RL me

 

my vampire form is about 6'1 though  and my lycan form is a 7 footer, acceptable breaks from reality there

[Pussycat Catnap]

My avatar has a normal non-freakish height. So about 5'3" to 5'9" (human or furry - not yet managed to scale my furry height down just right).

 

Why are we necro-ing all these ancient threads?

 

[Bree Giffen]

Well when you think about it, threads on avvy size get created all the time. Why not keep it on an older thread? Maybe the forum software is making it easier to bring up these old threads.

But returning to the topic, I used to be very tall for close to a year. I decided one day to recreate the room where my computer was. It would be cool to sit at my computer in SL and look around my room. So I measured out the walls, the table, my chair, etc. and converted everything to meters and started building. Let's just say that my avatar could not fit through the door, my eye level was above the ceiling, I could not sit on such a tiny chair and table! It was a real eye opening moment. I imagined if my avatar were real and in my room. She would not be a tall person but a mythical giant.

After I resized my avatar to a realistic height everything looked well. I had to resize all of my attachments but it was surprising that my avatar could look the same on a smaller scale. From there, I eventually grew up to 6ft tall over the years but I'll never go back to anything taller.

[Rebecca Wendell]

forgive me for finding it funy to hear people going on about "giant avatars" at 7 foot or so..

I personaly use a micro avatar unless I'm going to rp in a place they are not permited after deformation (or a very special mesh) the mini's go from about a knee height to ankle height on most of you biggies depending on the specific model (I know of 4 variations so far)

[Coby Foden]

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Bree Giffen wrote:

But returning to the topic, I used to be very tall for close to a year. I decided one day to recreate the room where my computer was. It would be cool to sit at my computer in SL and look around my room. So I measured out the walls, the table, my chair, etc. and converted everything to meters and started building. Let's just say that my avatar could not fit through the door, my eye level was above the ceiling, I could not sit on such a tiny chair and table! It was a real eye opening moment. I imagined if my avatar were real and in my room. She would not be a tall person but a mythical giant.

After I resized my avatar to a realistic height everything looked well. I had to resize all of my attachments but it was surprising that my avatar could look the same on a smaller scale. From there, I eventually grew up to 6ft tall over the years but I'll never go back to anything taller.

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I'm glad to hear about your positive experiment Bree. I do hope that more content creators would do the same. Build to realistic scale. The result might well be that the ridiculously big human avatars would start dissappering gradually as they could not find a house, or a vehicle anywhere where they could fit in. Yay!

:matte-motes-evil-grin: :smileyhappy:

[TaliaAlZul]

I've been on and off the Grid couple times now, last time I vanished from Second Life I was gone for so long, I opted to sell my account on Ebay((Still Don't know if that was league or not, but at the time LOTS of people who quit SL sold their accounts after wiping the slate clean of real life info, and refreshing it)) Regardless when Second Life was a Beta, people usually would try and mimic real life height, and I've come to realize defining height comparatively is best done inside mouse look((which I still wish SL or any viewer for that matter would make more of a free choice as sometimes I wish I could just chill and roam in first person))

That being said, I'm a dude in real life, who openly prefers roaming SL as a woman, mainly due to the fact Men's clothing on Second Life is frankly re-textures of other meshes, and the selection in a whole is boring. Whereas with woman's cloths I have more fun shopping in them, whether just jeans and a shirt, or a romantic ensemble, it's harder but more gratifying when I see my creations take form.

My avatar is about 6'4... I usually keep it measured on meters half way to 6'5. But that's because I made her leggy.. Not long and slender, but long and tone, my avatar in a whole is tone to be honest... Regardless what kind of bugs me more, isn't tall ones, it's all the Ken and Barbie dolls roaming around, you know, the ones who HAVE to look perfect, yes it's SL, yes you're your own plastic surgeon... But to me it's imperfections that make the best avatars, be it height differences, how the height is made, so on.. To me those are more fun to look at, even if some look child like. Note my girlfriend who we also role play a couple on SL while dating in real life((Cause why not)) her avatar is about 5'11 and some of the poses we do just due to the height difference look adorable x3

[Sephina Frostbite]

With my shape and skin my avi looks best on the tall side. i made her short and it just doesn't work. I have long sensuous legs the look terrible at a normal height. I always laugh when people mock tall avis for being different. This isn't real. We are individuals. Some tall some short some freakishly short and some freakishly tall. It's the person behind the avi, the person you get to know. That's what counts. Realism...haha. Yeah how many pixies and were wolves and vampires have you seen?

[SinfulPrince]

Hm. Interesting. If 5meters is roughly 16 feet and I dunno any regular houses with 16 ft walls......You make a point.

ALTHOUGH then all my furniture would be made for the jolly green giant lol or is now.

*goes to measure the chairs

[Ceka Cianci]

i figure to each their own..

if i am too tall or too small for someones liking..theydon't have to like me or haveme on their land..

i'll leave when asked..

i always look for the sim or land rules right away as to not be a problem forthem..and if i am too tall or too short for their liking i port right away..

if a person doesn't own the land..then i don't see how it is any of their business how tall or small i decided to become..or if i decided to have an arm coming out of my ear.. lol

really it's not..

i don't have time to waste on someone thinking i should be whatever they want me to be in the SL that i am paying for..

unless they want to start picking up my tab..

fear my shopping spree's ..that is all i will say hehehe

[Nox Vought]

Shouldn't matter, all types of avatar heights can look good from big to small. Anyone who says an avatar looks like a kid because it's short is delusional. Typically I'm a little over 6 foot in SL which is my real life height (did that on purpose heh).

 

 

[ziicutie]

Maybe you are all ofr the using a more realistic height but you will find yourself way too small compared to everybody else and the majority rules. If you want to convert your real life height or desired height into something more compatible with second life avatars then I suggest using this simple formula.

 

Avatar Hieght (in meters) * 100 * 0.8 = Your height in centimeaters * 2.54 = Your height in inches

 

I have a scripted object that dose just that for you. I might be able to give you one if oyu want it.

 

[Freya Mokusei]

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ziicutie wrote:

Maybe you are all ofr the using a more realistic height but you will find yourself way too small compared to everybody else and the majority rules. If you want to convert your real life height or desired height into something more compatible with second life avatars then I suggest using this simple formula.

 

Avatar Hieght (in meters) * 100 * 0.8 = Your height in centimeaters

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No. Stop this and set it on fire.

Avatar height in meters * 100 = Your height in centimeters. Don't distort rulers.

If you want to be tall that's fine, but don't pretend you're doing it in some sensible and reasonable (especially realistic, haha) way. All you're doing is adding more confusion and insanity to what is, really, a very simple reality. Rulers are rulers.

I mean, I could build a house with a build factor of 3:5 (0.6m = 1m), but I couldn't then say "Look, my house is realistic and well-sized! It is measured accurate to my RL house to the centimeter!" - because I've invented an arbitrary and ficticious standard.

Also, this thread is old, and there's nothing new to add.

[Coby Foden]

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ziicutie wrote:

 

Avatar Hieght (in meters) * 100 * 0.8 = Your height in centimeaters * 

2.54 = Your height in inches

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. . . Stop!  Don't start giving it to people!  There's confusion enough around. No need for more. Thanks.

 

Burn it, trash it, delete it, forget it.

 

[Clairelyse]

For me personally, I like having a smaller avatar and I feel like it really is up to personal preference.  It shouldn't be deemed inappropriate to be short no matter where you are.  As long as you present yourself as an adult and your avatar appears to be an adult who just happens to be smaller than people around you then it really isn't an issue in my mind. 

Hobbit Pride!

[Lewis Luminos]

My avatar is 6'4" (prim height not agent height) which makes me pretty short for a guy on the grid. I'm also a bit more "cuddly" than average; less muscle and more bodyfat, and a skin that's less toned-looking.  Which is pretty much how I am in RL; short and cuddly.  I often find other avatars towering above me but I don't care. No-one's going to possibly believe I'm a kid. Not with this beard.

[DBDani]

 

Keli Kyrie wrote:

I am about 5'7'' in SL and RL. I try to promote more realistic hight but each to there own. What ever makes you happy.

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Hi Keli! 

My name's Dani and may I ask, how did you change your Avatar's height?? I'm frustrated over this. I'm 5-7 as well but I look 7 feet tall in this game. I would LOVE to be my true, RL height. Do you have any pointers or do you know of a way I can change my height? I apprceiate all or anything you could help me do to change this.

dani 

[Rhonda Huntress]

Dani, try this.

1. Take off any shoes you may have on.
2. right click your avatar and then "Edit My Shape"
3. The very top slider is height.  Set this to 50 for now but don't worry about what it says as your height; we'll come back to it.
4. Open up the Torso section.  Find torso length and set it to 45.  Find arm length and set it to 80.
5. Open up the Leg section.  Find leg length and set it to 55.
6. Now, go all the way back to the top, under Body, and adjust the height slider unti you are 5.6 feet tall.
7. On the bottom, Click "Save As" and save your shape with a new name.

Close everything up and your done.  Just wear your new shape.

[Destiny Delacroix]

I use my own real height. When I first started. everyone was 7 to 8 feet tall tottering around on size zero feet which to me looked comically bizarre, so about day 3 I went to 5' 3" making me 5'8" in pumps never looked back. 10 years later. I see builders finally build things to Human standard heights. My main example is surfboards (I love surfing in SL). You have long boards and short boards. oversized AVI's look rather silly on a longboard, and on a short board they may as well toss a toothpick in the surf and have at it.

[Syo Emerald]

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Destiny Delacroix wrote:

I use my own real height. When I first started. everyone was 7 to 8 feet tall tottering around on size zero feet which to me looked comically bizarre, so about day 3 I went to 5' 3" making me 5'8" in pumps never looked back. 10 years later. I see builders finally build things to Human standard heights. My main example is surfboards (I love surfing in SL). You have long boards and short boards. oversized AVI's look rather silly on a longboard, and on a short board they may as well toss a toothpick in the surf and have at it.

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And...this one here is a prime example on why I stay away from people who brag about how their avatar matches their real life size. :matte-motes-smug:

[Rhonda Huntress]

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Syo Emerald wrote:

...this one here is a prime example on why I stay away from people who brag about how their avatar matches their real life size. :matte-motes-smug:

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But in RL I have 32" R cup chest, 14" waist and 34" hips.  Just like my avatar.