Why is everything so big in SL?

[Syo Emerald]

Back in the day, the starter avatars were quite big and the default camera position wasn't helping either. Nobody really paid any attention on downsizing what to them looked normal. So they started building stuff that was fitted to what their avatars were sized like. Especially old stuff from years ago will make you look too small.

Today there is a bigger range of avatar sizes around, but its still above average for most.

 

[Syo Emerald]

Back in the day, the starter avatars were quite big and the default camera position wasn't helping either. Nobody really paid any attention on downsizing what to them looked normal. So they started building stuff that was fitted to what their avatars were sized like. Especially old stuff from years ago will make you look too small.

Today there is a bigger range of avatar sizes around, but its still above average for most.

 

[Ethan Paslong]

1 hour ago, Mutsi said:

I'm keeping myself at RL height and frankly I completely ignore giants.

first post and instantly ranting on people who see things different... great start!
Live and let live, pick your friends where you want don't judge others, will give you a lot nicer SL experience.

Many people come with explanations why.. or why not... real reason is: it's possible, it's allowed, and there are no rules for it. All judgement is based on nothing.

 

[amywilders]

Thank you all for the explainations. With that in mind, I will try to restrain myself and just go on living with it. I was just curious *smile*

[Alwin Alcott]

---

amywilders wrote:

Does anyone know why its like this?

---

because you are small... if you really feel akward about it, make yourself larger. Even than you can be smaller than average.

 

SL isn't made in RL proportions, the cam needs more space to follow your avatar, so real sized houses would be unusable... you would be in and your cam out all the time.

People have the ability to get larger/taller... and most simply do.

Must say the past few years sizes got a bit more variations. Not all use the max height anymore.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Alwin and Syo are quite right.

There are a number of reasons why both avatars and our surroundings are larger than in Real Life.

For one thing, people like to be tall.  So, this tends to make for avatars that are 6 feet or taller.

Next, a lot of gadgets (and the Appearance sliders) measure avatar height at EYE LEVEL, not at the top of the head.  This tends to under-report height.

And then, the default camera position is behind AND ABOVE your avatar.  This means that your point of view is actually even higher than your avatar.  If you enter a room with, say, an eight foot ceiling, your "camera" is likely to be buried in the ceiling!  This means that buildings tend to be built with high ceilings...twelve feet or more.

Now, when you make a building with high ceilings, the tendency is to make the other dimensions larger too, to make the building seem to be in proportion.  So windows get placed higher on walls, doors are taller, rooms are larger.

And, when you go to make furniture for these outsized rooms, the furniture gets made bigger too, to look "right".  

The end result is that, even with six-foot-plus avatars, we wind up looking like kids sitting in Mom or Dad's oversized chair.

You can either rail against this lack of proportion, obsess over it, or you can simply learn to live with it.

[mehllama]

A lot of houses in SL like those from Domineaux Effect are realistically proportioned, as is much of the furniture from Scarlet Creative. If you shop around, you will find furniture and buildings that don't look as if they were modeled from toys for kindergarteners; unfortunately, in addition to SL's perhaps lacking some foresight in setting scale standards, there are many creators even today for whom this is either not a strength or a personal preference of theirs (to each their own). But take heart: there are many of us who also enjoy making SL a more realistic experience and something that truly can be called Second Life rather than Second Cartoon  (not that cartoons are bad - those who prefer the latter are cool, too. The beauty of SL is everyone can make of it what they want). 

There was an earlier note above about camera issues in more life-sized dwellings. This can be a real issue, but much of it can be mitigated by changing your default camera positions (also great for really taking in the scenery). I placed my cam almost directly behind me at about eye-level. Here are my settings if you want to tweak yours:

Go to your debug settings in your advanced menu (Firestorm; idk about other viewers):

Type or paste this to change the offset:

Viewer 3+: "CameraOffsetRearView".
1.x viewers: "CameraOffsetDefault".

X: -2.800
Y: 0.000
Z: 0.100

Type or paste this to change the focus:

Viewer 3: "FocusOffsetRearView".
1.x viewers: "FocusOffsetDefault".

X: 3.000
Y: 0.000
Z: 0.200

Try those out and tweak them to suit. You can also change the front and side camera offsets. I find this cam setting to be much more immersive than the default "out of body experience" view setting. My avatar is 5'4". It would be great if more creators even if they prefer to make things larger than scale, made them mod or script-resizable, although a great many of them already do. So even if something seems too big at first, check to see if you can resize it.  

 

Edited May 29, 2017 by mehllama

[Richardus Raymaker]

On 28/05/2016 at 8:07 PM, Alwin Alcott said:

if you really feel akward about it, make yourself larger. Even than you can be smaller than average

That does not fix the problem.

Bigger avatars means bigger buildings. And that means bigger avatars.
The real problem that linden lab could have fixt years ago is the wrong camera position.
You can fix it yourself, but that fix not everything wrong in secondlife. And create new problems because verhicle creators think in the wrong camera angle.

Wrong scale and camera angle , including lack of FIRST PERSON mode (that is not mouselook) does not help to. Also i noticed that some avatars start to get only bigger this days.

Your suggestion to make correct sized avatars bigger is wrong. It would be better if the wrong big avatars scale correct. Smaller sized avatars look better to with the same texture size. And that is valid for everything. Also if everything is more rl scaled a sim would be bigger for the feeling.
 

Anyway, people that thing avarars in secondlife need to get bigger , the take the wrong approach.

[Alwin Alcott]

43 minutes ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

1 That does not fix the problem.
2 The real problem that linden lab could have fixt years ago is the wrong camera position.

3 Wrong scale and camera angle , 

4 Also i noticed that some avatars start to get only bigger this days.

5 Your suggestion to make correct sized avatars bigger is wrong.

6 Smaller sized avatars look better to with the same texture size.

7 And that is valid for everything. Also if everything is more rl scaled a sim would be bigger for the feeling.

8 Anyway, people that thing avarars in secondlife need to get bigger , the take the wrong approach.

1 yes it does

2 no everybody can adjust his cam position

3 no you repeat yourself

4 no simply not true, average height is going down. just a very limited group scales up, mostly caused by a bodycreator that likes gorilla shaped guys.

5 no when objects are to big and not possible to change, your avatar is the only and quickest option

6 most skins and appliers look ok as they are, things will just evolve as they always did.

7 no need for that

8 no, shows only you don't accept SL and RL are not scaled the same way, and you want to force your limited sight onto others.

 

What i also not really understand is the restart of this thread after a year

 

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

What i also not really understand is the restart of this thread after a year

I was told that one of the primary reasons that threads should not be locked after a certain amount of time is so someone could come along later and make a valid contribution to the topic.  While I seldom ever see such really happen, in this particular case Mehllama actually did give some useful information - something that I plan on playing around with.

While the restart of the thread with the new information is good - IMO, rehashing the issue itself could have been left buried.

[Alwin Alcott]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Mehllama actually did give some useful information - something that I plan on playing around with.

yes i agree to that, my remark was more meant to the other poster after her.

[HaileeTempesta]

Don't let anyone tell you that you have to just suck it up and deal with it, you don't.  A lot more creators are making realistically scaled homes and furnishings, you just have to spend time hoping around inworld to stores to find them is all.  No one should be told they have to "just deal with it", it is a completely unhelpful response.  I made my avatar my RL height of 6'0 years ago and I looked like I was 6 or 7yrs old next to all the giants in SL.  But, now my 6'0 height is actually the one looking like a giant now, even though it is my RL height. lol  I am not going to change it just because someone else says I have to if I want to find things that work with my size.  Instead, I will just find like minded people that know how to build correctly and find my happy place that way.

The Domineaux Effect and Roost are my go to housing choices for really nice, realistically scaled, textured and laid out houses.  They may seem a bit pricey to some, but, I am more than willing to pay for realism, low LI and great customer service.  Hard to find all three of those usually, but those two places have it.

[Cindy Evanier]

1 hour ago, HaileeTempesta said:

I made my avatar my RL height of 6'0 years ago and I looked like I was 6 or 7yrs old next to all the giants in SL.  But, now my 6'0 height is actually the one looking like a giant now

Same with me.  Back in 2009 I was often told I was "too small".  Now I often feel giant, motorboating my female friends when using a hug hud.  But I am me. I am not changing and I fit my partner perfectly

[Talligurl]

On 5/28/2016 at 1:49 PM, amywilders said:

Seeing my feet dangling form chairs and having door knobs right in my face feels just awkward.

The solution if you don't want to make yourself taller, Wear these shoes

[Callum Meriman]

10 hours ago, Talligurl said:

The solution if you don't want to make yourself taller, Wear these shoes

Looking at those I feel nothing but admiration for the skill of ladies trying to dance in them. A guy wearing them (or any heels i think) would likely snap his ankles.

[Nalates Urriah]

@amywilders "Why" is tough to answer. Several have given reasonable answers. There are numerous blogs that give historical accounts of how the problem came to be and they blame various people and causes. But, like going to a psychologist... once you learn you are the way you are because your mom dropped you on your head... what do you do with that information? She can't un-drop you...

My avatar is 5-10 (1.78m). More with heels. I am often tiny in a crowd. It's life. There are giants and tiny avatars in SL. With the new mesh bodies and the release of Bento we will see more huge and small avatars. We can control our size. We can't control the size of others.

There are those of us that campaign for more realistic size in SL. There are good reasons. Some esthetic and some economic. But. we have to tell people about them. On that learning quest you'll find there is a viewer... bug... glitch... legacy tradition... whatever we call it, in the viewer that misreports avatar size in the Apperance settings. So, people set a numerically correct size for their avatar and get a bigger than expected avatar. The numbers are wrong. For proof, set your height and then rez a cube and make it the same height. The avatar is bigger. Plus there are other technical issues. They combine to push things to be bigger.

To counter this we point people to the Model Shape Tool and Camera Tips in the hope more people will adopt more realistic sizes. But, in a world where people are free to make individual choice... things get chaotic, which is pretty neat.

[Mutsi]

Well simple - most people start playing have no clue about proportions, and than they just do what they think is right without even checking their size. Than there are idiotic SIM owners that put out anti-child-avi bots that eject on sight anyone smaller than 180 CM. Plus Lindens don't encourage correct people sizes either - bigger you are, bigger objects you have smaller become SIMs, and more you need. I'm keeping myself at RL height and frankly I completely ignore giants.

[Richardus Raymaker]

Because linden lab placed the camera at wrong position long ago and never fixed it. Better would be if secindlife did have default first person kode. Or at least that the change the camera ange. Problem, creators made things for the wrong scale and camera angle. Yes you can adjust the angle yourself, but fly a airplane and it does nit work because you not see anything with that camera angle.

 

And no, your not to small. Many are to big. 😋

[LittleMe Jewell]

Personally, I think it all started with some guy that wanted a bigger....... um..... you know 

 

 

 

[Cindy Evanier]

8 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Personally, I think it all started with all guys that wanted a bigger....... um..... you know 

 

 

 

FIFY

[Ethan Paslong]

8 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Personally, I think it all started with some guy that wanted a bigger....... um..... you know 

 

 

 

are you sure it were guys?

[Fionalein]

9 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Personally, I think it all started with some guy that wanted a bigger....... um..... you know 

 

 

 

and it's been an "arms" race ever since =^.^=

Edited March 22, 2019 by Fionalein

[Theresa Tennyson]

On 3/21/2019 at 3:52 AM, Mutsi said:

Well simple - most people start playing have no clue about proportions, and than they just do what they think is right without even checking their size. Than there are idiotic SIM owners that put out anti-child-avi bots that eject on sight anyone smaller than 180 CM. Plus Lindens don't encourage correct people sizes either - bigger you are, bigger objects you have smaller become SIMs, and more you need. I'm keeping myself at RL height and frankly I completely ignore giants.

Maybe if you were taller you'd find it easier to read calendars.