Dwellings: size and camming..

[LexxiXhan]

On 27/02/2018 at 5:43 AM, Pussycat Catnap said:

Mine had the purpose of seeing the field of view as my avatar might see it, but slightly removed to see her as well, then a frontal for snapshots, and a top down for navigating in thick crowds...

Neat! Does that mean there's a way to save presets? Or do you just change the settings manually for each scenario?

[LexxiXhan]

On 28/02/2018 at 7:31 AM, Kittyn Fuhr said:

Have you considered the use of some half-walls?  perhaps half-height bookcases? or like the long fireplaces, that are made for dividing rooms? and some of the fallback...make small, cozy areas, instead of trying to bring all into one big room.  Use rugs to define some...

Why yes, yes I have!

Or rather, my existing home rather lends itself to that, which is why I'm pretty happy with it so far

[Pussycat Catnap]

4 hours ago, LexxiXhan said:

Neat! Does that mean there's a way to save presets? Or do you just change the settings manually for each scenario?

Set it and forget it basically.

Find what makes your eyes most comfortable, and makes it feel natural to look at your avatar inside of a space - and then then leave it alone. Record the values somewhere of course because anytime you end up resetting all your SL configs (like a re-install, upgrade, or computer glitch), you have to go in and set them again...

 

[Chic Aeon]

I agree that open plan is best, maybe with an upstairs and a kitchen area (not necessarily closed in with a door. The "made from blueprint plans" I have tried (very obvious if you look at lots of houses) are cumbersome at best and while you CAN changed your camera positions from the default, your guest will likely have the defaults on -- so I have always built with the defaults. 

The biggest issue that I find is stairs and seeing beyond walls as you walk up. This can of course be fixed by really big stairs -- and then you have that too many steps out from reality mess.

My builds are larger than real life but not tons larger -- especially if you are one of the crank-those-sliders-to-the-max shapes LOL.   That and tall ceilings which I love IRL too work best for what "I" want. 

Even within brands there can be huge differences in house hows are made and what works and doesn't work.  So that Demo, Demo, Demo mantra applies. 

[Penny Patton]

I've been using the camera presets Pussycat shared for years and have also been creating sims exclusively around the concept of a more realistic, coherent scale, for just as long. So I cannot agree with the idea that a more realistic scale in SL doesn't work, although given how Linden Lab so far has not make it easy, I can see how some people might come to that conclusion. In my own experience, it's not only worked for me, but allowed me to create larger, more detailed environments. Larger in that if you scale content and avatars down, the space in a sim is effectively larger, allowing for more content within that space. I've been able to fit 3-4 sims worth of content within a single sim. So successfully, I might add, that I've even fooled visiting Lindens into believing they were in a multi-sim environment.

My own private home is on a 4096sq.m. mainland parcel and yet has more content than some homestead sim builds.

After adjusting your camera based on Pussycat's links, check out the following sims for successful examples of better looking, more detailed sims achieved through a better use of scale:

Doomed Ship  - A sci-fi/horror environment. It used to be an RP sim, these days it's mostly empty so feel free to explore. Most of the build predates mesh and yet despite the size and pre-mesh detail of the environment it uses only a fraction of the sim's land impact.

The 1920's Berlin Project - An SL recreation of Berlin during the Weimar Republic. A thriving RP community, requires realistic human sizes and appropriate 1920's dress. Outfits and shapes are provided at the entrance, or if you'd rather wait they host semi-regular "Open House" periods where people may explore more casually.

There's also a couple RP sims I've done the builds for, but they're very much adult so rather than linking directly I'll just encourage you to look this one up in SL search.

Minotaur Empire - Sword and sandals adult RP in a Greek mythology setting. Appropriate dress required but there's ladies outfits at the entrance and as long as you look generally fantasy-ish I'm sure you could get in to have a look around.

Also, some good news, Linden Lab plans to roll out new camera features which will include new presets (such as my own) and the ability to create and save your own presets. This will make it much easier for others to enjoy better camera settings.

 

[Maitimo]

On 24/02/2018 at 11:09 AM, Richardus Raymaker said:

That is why am still screaming for first person mode in secondlife that you can set as default. Don't confuse it with mouselook, because in mouselook you cannot access many things in the viewer.

There's a way to change your camera settings to do this - I've never tried it before but I did just now, and surprised how well it works. Here's the settings I used:

CameraOffsetRearView:  X: +0.4, Y: 0.0, Z: -0.45

FocusOffsetRearView: X: 1.0, Y:0.0, Z: 0.7

The only downside is that you can no longer use the mouse scroll wheel to pull back into a third-person view; it just tilts your camera  up or down instead. Which is useful in itself, especially for stairs.