Female avis are getting smaller and smaller? 0.0

[Ceka Cianci]

On 7/19/2022 at 9:53 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Or way too tight.

or loose..

Sometimes I can't find a top that won't give someone a side view bewby shot..

This why it's soo good to do a spin around you avatar before making that final purchase.. hehehe

[Gabriele Graves]

Except for the really earliest days I started, my avatar has always been small.  I've been 1.64m as measured by script and ~1.80m as measured by prim with flat bare feet and bald head for a long time now.

[Phil Deakins]

@Nalates Urriah

If I'm not mistaken, we've been through this before. Also, if I'm not mistaken, you are one of the few who seem to think that SL sizes should be the same as RL sizes. With you, I think the idea is that a smaller house, for instance, on a, say 1024, plot, means there is more space left for other stuff. I think it's to do with making the most of the land. You are entitled to your opinions, of course, but I think they are just your preferences.
 

16 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

All of SL is built by people. There is nothing in the platform that requires large avatars or oversized building.

The camera in SL needs larger-than-RL sizes. That's everyone's camera.

If something is "oversized", it is oversized with respect to something else. What is that something else? The real world? SL isn't the real world. It's a different world, so nothing in it is oversized in the way that you mean.
 

16 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

There are whole regions devoted to tiny avatars and everything is sized for them.

Fine. Please post an SLURL to one. I'd like to see it. It doesn't make any difference though. The default camera position is what it is, and it's what almost everyone uses. If it requires a camera position change, then it isn't natural to SL, and will be unsuitable for most avatars.

Now...
I, and one or two others, have posted why larger-that-RL sizes are necessary in SL. You please state why you think it is better for buildings and avatars to be RL sizes in this world, which is not RL. Also if you wouldn't mind, please post an SLURL to a 12'x12' (RL-sized) furnished room, and the camera position that can allow an avatar to walk around happily in that room without bumping into, or walking over, things. If you don't know of such a room, you can easily make one, with a ceiling, and use blocks of wood for the furniture. That's what I did years ago, when we previously had this same discussion.

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Lindal Kidd]

I am sort of midway between Nalates and Phil in this debate. I agree with Nalates that one can modify their default camera position, and this would allow rooms and furniture to be more "realistically" (in proportion to the avatar) sized.

But not entirely. My first SL home was a big power yacht, with a "realistically" sized interior. As Phil suggests, I was always ending up with my camera behind a wall, or in a ceiling. I had to go into Mouselook to walk around below decks. It was such an inconvenience that I ended up living up on deck about 90% of the time.

I think that no matter how we edit our cameras, SL buildings, and their furnishings, are always going to be somewhat larger than their RL counterparts. It's the third person camera, you just can't entirely get away from its knock-on effects.

(For those who say, "just use Mouselook", I find that using it actually decreases my sense of immersion. Rather than make me feel that I am more "present", I feel less so, since "I" have disappeared.)

Edited July 21, 2022 by Lindal Kidd

[Nalates Urriah]

 

 

7 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

@Nalates Urriah

If I'm not mistaken, we've been through this before. Also, if I'm not mistaken, you are one of the few who seem to think that SL sizes should be the same as RL sizes. With you, I think the idea is that a smaller house, for instance, on a, say 1024, plot, means there is more space left for other stuff. I think it's to do with making the most of the land. You are entitled to your opinions, of course, but I think they are just your preferences.
 

The camera in SL needs larger-than-RL sizes. That's everyone's camera.

If something is "oversized", it is oversized with respect to something else. What is that something else? The real world? SL isn't the real world. It's a different world, so nothing in it is oversized in the way that you mean.
 

Fine. Please post an SLURL to one. I'd like to see it. It doesn't make any difference though. The default camera position is what it is, and it's what almost everyone uses. If it requires a camera position change, then it isn't natural to SL, and will be unsuitable for most avatars.

Now...
I, and one or two others, have posted why larger-that-RL sizes are necessary in SL. You please state why you think it is better for buildings and avatars to be RL sizes in this world, which is not RL. Also if you wouldn't mind, please post an SLURL to a 12'x12' (RL-sized) furnished room, and the camera position that can allow an avatar to walk around happily in that room without bumping into, or walking over, things. If you don't know of such a room, you can easily make one, with a ceiling, and use blocks of wood for the furniture. That's what I did years ago, when we previously had this same discussion.

 

Perhaps in your circle of friends and the places you hang, I would be in the minority. But other than by your observation, how would you know my thinking is the minority?

More efficient use of land makes economic sense. While it is my preference, I suspect more people prefer to save money than waste it.

Your thinking the camera has any NEEDS is silly. The Lindens set default values and building styles long ago. SL has changed since then. The camera is adjustable in numerous ways. Once one learns to work the SL camera the SL experience can by much nicer. I think it obvious that changes in SL made it obvious the camera defaults needed to change. Thus Penny's writing was an effort to get the Lab or at least users, to adopt better camera settings. In my writing I hoped people would learn and find SL more enjoyable whether the Lab changed or not. They haven't. And enough people were interested in changing the camera that the Firestorm Team added convenient controls for adjusting camera defaults.

True. But there is nothing inherent in the SL system that requires we build large. Building large is good for the Lab, people need more land which the Lab sells. IS that motive... Building small makes economic sense and saves residents money.

What, your too lazy to do your own research on places for Tinys? Or have you also not learned to use SL search? https://search.secondlife.com/?query_term=tinys&search_type=standard&collection_chosen=events&collection_chosen=destinations&collection_chosen=places&collection_chosen=groups&maturity=gma

Your idea that a place built for Tinys would require a camera change is a bit uninformed. If you would have done your research and visited a made-for-Tiny region you would know how wrong the idea is. While your thinking that a Tiny's region would be unsuitable for most avatars is true. But it is supposed to be. It was made for Tiny avatars. But it is not impossible for one using default settings to enjoy.

You seem to have the idea that there is some requirement for complying to the default settings of SL. There is no necessity for that. The mottoes of SL should make it clear the creators of SL intended for us to build SL our way.

You are welcome to conform to what you have been given and never try to improve or change the defaults. You seem to think SL is rigid and people need to conform to it rather than change it to fit what they want. Conformance and dependence on central authority are ideas pushed in RL's daily propaganda and you are welcome to them. But there are people in SL that are adventurous and experiment with SL. In doing so we get to see the better possibilities available in SL. I suspect that other than the newbies, most residents are in that group. After all something like 75% or more of residents use the Firestorm Viewer.

Your 12x12 room example and inability to figure out how to make a camera work in it, just shows your lack of understanding of how the viewer camera works. Using the camera in tight spaces is a common problem in Tiny, Normal, or Giant builds. Try pressing the 'M' key for the quick and easy. Its there for the new and those needing quick quick change. OR, if you have progressed to using the Firestorm viewer, you could open the Camera Control panel and select the Side View, click on the avatar, then use Mouse Wheel and the Shift or Ctrl key to adjust the camera. Or... you can stay in the SL world as the newbies see it, if that is your preference.

[Phil Deakins]

6 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Your 12x12 room example and inability to figure out how to make a camera work in it, just shows your lack of understanding of how the viewer camera works.

I did it all before for the forum, and it simply doesn't work. If you think it does, please do as I asked and create a 12'x12' furnished room. Tell us the camera position that works in it and an SLURL to it, and we can all size our avatar heights to test it and see for ourselves. Ok?
 

16 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

What, your too lazy to do your own research on places for Tinys? Or have you also not learned to use SL search? https://search.secondlife.com/?query_term=tinys&search_type=standard&collection_chosen=events&collection_chosen=destinations&collection_chosen=places&collection_chosen=groups&maturity=gma

Well, I did as you suggested and went to 2 of the places, one of which was selling  stuff for tinies, so that didn't help. The other was renting accommodation for tinies. I found that the buildings there were anything but tiny. Room sizes were no smaller than almost any other buildings in SL, and larger than many. My SL-height avatar went into one house where the door was 2½ times higher then the avatar lol. So, please post a URL for the sort of region you have in mind - RL sized rooms/buildings.

I'm not going to drag this on and on. We've had it all before and, whilst making things smaller does mean that we can get more usage out of a parcel, we all know that, with the exception of very large RL rooms, RL sized rooms simply don't work in SL regardless of where the camera is placed. The fixed eyes and head mean that a typical 12x12 room cannot be walked around as we would in RL, without walking over and bumping into stuff.

You can have RL-sized rooms if they are very large RL-sized rooms, of course, but that would defeat the purpose of RL sized-rooms - more space in the parcel to use for other things.

[JeromFranzic]

On 7/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

I adore the skinny-thicc-trex look, who cares if it's realistic or not

Yeah, that's somewhat close to the alt I use the most, though I do add a bit more depth and weight to her bust and waist. 😊

[purrrkitten]

I think female avis actually got a lot taller (and umm...bigger) compared to when I joined in 2013 or 2014.

Mine is still tiny because I'm tiny irl and don't have any desire to be tall.

[Ceka Cianci]

I usually made the places where I lived and adjusted furniture to my fit..

If I was buying a home, it had to be open or big..  All my places I live are open and  either big or huge just because of never wanting to worry about my camera.. I've bought stores and clubs and even sim size environments just not to feel cramped.

I don't think I've ever lived in anything small and would probably feel like I had to get out of any place too small..

I think this is one of the smaller places I ever lived in.

This one is a store I bought that I was converting into a home at the time. It had a whole other floor up top and some really wild lighting that was so neat.. there is as much room if not more on the back side of my camera and goes way to my right..

When it comes to homes, the smaller I felt the better.. I'll take a nice warehouse or barn conversion any day over a cottage.. i think it has a lot to do with living in the city and then now living in the country.

For me, me just being smaller feels better and more relaxing and natural for me..  I don't really fantasize about being bigger in here..

Sometimes I fantasize what it would be like not to get a workout getting things out of the cabinets though .. lol

[Da5id Weatherwax]

On the subject of realistic sizing, Ive tried to get as close as possible to my RL 6'1" while still keeping sensible proportioning of the body/limbs/head etc. - a LOT easier for a guy to do realistic sizing than a lady! I've largely succeeded, at least as far as my height measured by a prim goes. The appearance editor thinks I'm a good 8 inches taller, but stand next to a 6'1" prim and it's within half an inch of my av's height visually! The crazy part of it is that mesh items when picked up by my avatar, even when I rez them next to a prim they are accurately sized, "look too small" - I have no idea why and measuring them with a prim gives the same sizes as I built them at. I typically have to scale them by a small "fudge factor" to make them look right.

I'm in the middle of building a (rather substantial) house at the moment and when I started I took one of the interior rooms first and sized it 3 ways.  1: strictly to RL dimensions. 2: scaled by an average fudge factor" that makes mesh items look right with my av. 3: standard SL scales. I walked around inside all three and immediately discarded the idea of building the rest at standard SL scale. Either of the other two would work, but the one scaled by the fudge factor worked better.

I've come to the conclusion that measurement in SL is just weird and I simply have to adjust to make it look right, while trying to stick to "natural dimensions" as much as possible.

[Angelina Sinclair]

5'1" is exceptionally small in SL. It is near child-like, and no I am not calling short people, children. Due to camera positions and the height of objects in the area, you would just appear more child than adult. You can't assume everyone will adjust their cameras away from SL defaults, that's just silly. Nor can you assume folks will bother measuring the height of their furniture and homes to make sure it is realistic.

Some people are overly obsessed with realism, but then are perfectly ok with fantasy stuff, magic, furries, breedables and other unrealistic things. Let it go! Let them be whoever they want to be, even if it is an 8ft giant!

Plus it is not like you can't make your avatar taller and make different shape sizes for different communities.

[Gwin LeShelle]

4 hours ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

5'1" is exceptionally small in SL. It is near child-like, and no I am not calling short people, children. Due to camera positions and the height of objects in the area, you would just appear more child than adult. You can't assume everyone will adjust .....

Let it go! Let them be whoever they want to be, even if it is an 8ft giant!

Maybe take your own advice and let it go XD 

Let them be whoever they want to be, even if it is a 5ft shortie!

I personally chose my RL height back then because I was a noob and was like errr what height is ok? Well just start with my own and I kept it at that most of the time. Nothing to do with realism, and I don't care for others and their cams and furniture around me, I have my own parcel and furniture and don't pixel hump so I really don't care for height differences at all. My SL needs to look nice for me ...nothing else matters tbh. It needs to spark joy in me not others x3

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Female avis are getting smaller and smaller . . .

. . . and one day, we're all going to get sooooo small that we go "POOF" and vanish!

We'll have flown away to a Happier Place where shelves aren't even taller and more impossible to navigate than in RL, and where we don't get neck strain trying to look our partners in the eye. Where we can dance with each other without experiencing vertigo, and don't need a stepladder to reach the knob of our bedroom doors.

And all of the Men in Second Life will be reduced at the last to lining the walls of Fogbound, manspreading on stools and staring dismally and forlornly at each other as they endlessly and repetitively stroke their prim hair and the cuffs of their ca. 2015 mesh jean jackets.

How Sad. Poor Men of Second Life!

We'll miss you! And we'll send postcards.

🙂

[Blush Bravin]

When making a female shape I went smaller due to the fact that you just can't get female arms to get long enough to be realistic with a tall avie. Males don't have this issue. Their arms grow much longer using the sliders than do females. I think this is part of the reason we had so many walking around with T-rex syndrome so many years ago. I've noticed that as female avatars got shorter, female avatars became more proportionally correct to the normal human form in regard to arm length. I can get a better proportioned avatar, even at very short heights, than I ever could trying to make a very tall female.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Blush Bravin

[Katherine Heartsong]

Anyone is welcome to come stand next to my 5'9" proportioned avatar (according to 8 blocks of prim height) anytime they want.

Had to turn yet another guy down at Franks last night after I realized how silly it looked with the top of my head coming up only to slightly under his nipples, though he did seem to enjoy where my breasts were moving along him while close dancing I know that sounds really picky, but it just looks so stupidly unrealistic, and no, I won't float 3' off the ground to accommodate you. My LouBous stay touching the floor.

As Blush just said, to get your arm length proportionally correct (that is, almost half way between your body's midpoint and the bottom of your knees), if your female avatar is much taller than 6' or 182cm by prim height, you just can't do it. The sliders won't allow you the correct arm length. Hard enough tweaking the sliders to get the right torso length and hips and crotch in the right place, hence the girls who look like their V is up at their navel.

Guys avatars are easier to proportion correctly if you put any effort into it. My male alt stands a RL tall 6'3" and looks puny in most places, sadly.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Katherine Heartsong

[Katherine Heartsong]

4 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

ignore. an instance where i hit the "quote" instead of "edit"

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Katherine Heartsong

[Theresa Tennyson]

On 7/21/2022 at 3:24 AM, Phil Deakins said:

@Nalates Urriah

If I'm not mistaken, we've been through this before. Also, if I'm not mistaken, you are one of the few who seem to think that SL sizes should be the same as RL sizes. With you, I think the idea is that a smaller house, for instance, on a, say 1024, plot, means there is more space left for other stuff. I think it's to do with making the most of the land. You are entitled to your opinions, of course, but I think they are just your preferences.
 

The camera in SL needs larger-than-RL sizes. That's everyone's camera.

If something is "oversized", it is oversized with respect to something else. What is that something else? The real world? SL isn't the real world. It's a different world, so nothing in it is oversized in the way that you mean.
 

Fine. Please post an SLURL to one. I'd like to see it. It doesn't make any difference though. The default camera position is what it is, and it's what almost everyone uses. If it requires a camera position change, then it isn't natural to SL, and will be unsuitable for most avatars.

Now...
I, and one or two others, have posted why larger-that-RL sizes are necessary in SL. You please state why you think it is better for buildings and avatars to be RL sizes in this world, which is not RL. Also if you wouldn't mind, please post an SLURL to a 12'x12' (RL-sized) furnished room, and the camera position that can allow an avatar to walk around happily in that room without bumping into, or walking over, things. If you don't know of such a room, you can easily make one, with a ceiling, and use blocks of wood for the furniture. That's what I did years ago, when we previously had this same discussion.

 

We've gone over this sooooo many times...

Here's what I wrote about it in 2013:

I decided to do some research to see what the actual de facto avatar scale in SL was. The way I did this was to measure objects I had that were intended for use by avatars and which were based on a real-life model and compare their dimensions to the RL versions. I measured six cars from six different makers, a pinball machine and a guitar. I came up with a scale factor of roughly 1.25:1. This would make a shape meant to represent a real-life female fashion model (minimum height 5'-10") about 7'-3" in SL and a 6'-5 professional athlete would be about 8 feet tall. These are pretty close to the common heights of traditional avatar shapes for the idealized body types popular in SL. It's also close to the hard limits for maximum avatar height using the system shape.

A consistent scaling system based on avatar heights would therefore mean that everything would be around 1.25 times real-life size. However, a RL room scaled up 1.25 times doesn't work significantly better than a 1:1 model due to the camera position. Built environments are usually significantly larger, quickly getting up to 2x life size. It's impossible to make a standard avatar twice natural size so even the large avatars will look too small in these larger rooms. As far as furniture goes it can be scaled either to the avatar scale, making it small for the room; the building scale, making it large for the avatars; or anywhere in between. Different makers will have different ideas about exactly how to scale things and none of these will be based on an actual measurement system.

I fail to see how this state of affairs could be considered to work "perfectly well."

Using RL sizes instead of arbitrarily scaled up ones for avatars would at least let the overall environment be reduced to about 80% of its current size while maintaining the current building proportions. As far as the camera position goes the camera offset is partially based on avatar height - a shorter avatar will have a lower default camera than a taller one. The "chase" position, which causes room footprints to need to be larger, won't change but room height can be reduced somewhat and height is the controlling factor in buildings with open floor plans.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I can't imagine turning down a dance over a guy's height (or anything else unrealistic about his avatar, for that matter). But then, who am I to worry about realism - I'm an orc (or elemental or undead or harpy or deer or demon or a bright pink sparkling version of Marilyn Monroe...as the mood hits).

[Phil Deakins]

@Theresa Tennyson

Your research was interesting. As a furniture maker back then, I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that furniture and building makers didn't think in terms of scaling stuff according to RL; e.g. 1.25:1. We just made stuff that seemed to fit SL avatars, including ourselves. There was never a reason to even think about the RL sizes. We were in SL and we created things for use in SL.

You didn't deal with one important thing in your research - the eyes. In RL, it's the movement of the head and eyes that allow us to not bump into things in smaller spaces. When walking, the camera (the SL eyes) stares rigidly in one direction only, which means that moving around in a typical furnished RL-sized room of, say, 12'x12' is impossible without bumping into and walking over things. In a previous discussion, perhaps the one you took your post from, I experimented with it, and I found that RL-sized rooms simply don't work anywhere near satisfactorily enough, regardless of avatar height and camera position. Not even close.

As well as that, there is no reason to do it. SL is not the same world as RL. SL is a different world and there's no general reason to copy the other one.

This whole discussion through the years has only ever been because a tiny number of people prefer SL to match RL sizes. One of those who have argued for RL sizes through the years is in this thread. At least she has an actual reason for the preference which, if it worked, would be excellent. I can't criticise the reason, which is to get more usage out of a parcel of land. What I can say about it is that it doesn't need things to be RL-sized to do it. It only needs things to be smaller. RL sizes are irrelevant for that particular reason.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Well, there's another factor that dictates how tall one's avatar is, and that's simple aesthetics.

I know that there are women who really like tall, thin avatars, sometimes (to my eye and, I suspect, objectively) exaggerated. And that's fine -- just as there are women who like the extremely curvy bodies of a Kupra. And I don't think we should be dictating to anyone that their avatars must be "proportional" or "realistic" in height.

I, on the other hand, do like a realistic look. I like my arms proportional to my torso, and my legs not supermodel long: it's just the look I like. And I'm not going to permit the default sizing of most things in SL to dictate to me that I should change that.

Pace @Phil Deakins, I don't see any reason why tall should be the default in SL, and "realistic" or "short" not. It would be interesting to get a sense of the distributions of heights among women in particular these days: creators are still mostly making things for ultra tall avatars, but is that in fact warranted anymore? It is at least possible that the balance has shifted over the years, and that a majority, or at least a very sizable minority, of women are using shorter avatars -- in which case, it might be time rethink that default sizing for houses, vehicles, decorative objects, etc.

As for Phil's suggestion that the camera necessitates oversized rooms, I invariably shrink any structures I use (where possible) to something proportional to my height. In fact, I use the standard height for interior doors -- about 2.02 m. -- to gauge the correct size for my buildings. And honestly the camera thing just isn't that big a deal. I may find my camera lost behind a wall a little more often than in a larger room, but not dramatically. And it takes all of about 1 or 2 seconds to adjust it when that happens. So, it's really not much of an inhibiting factor for me. And I'd rather do that than feel that I am living in a school gymnasium.

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

@Theresa Tennyson

You didn't deal with one important thing in your research - the eyes. In RL, it's the movement of the head and eyes that allow us to not bump into things in smaller spaces. When walking, the camera (the SL eyes) stares rigidly in one direction only, which means that moving around in a typical furnished RL-sized room of, say, 12'x12' is impossible without bumping into and walking over things. In a previous discussion, perhaps the one you took your post from, I experimented with it, and I found that RL-sized rooms simply don't work anywhere near satisfactorily enough, regardless of avatar height and camera position. Not even close.

 

Theresa Tennyson sighs.

I acknowledged that. My point is that making avatars taller doesn't help matters; in fact, it makes things worse by raising the camera rail.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Pace @Phil Deakins, I don't see any reason why tall should be the default in SL, and "realistic" or "short" not.

"realistic"? What's realistic in SL? Only SL is realistic in SL. RL is a different world entirely

The SL avatar heights come about because of the camera. And it's absolutely fine because this is SL, so it's "realistic" in SL

 

[Cinos Field]

2 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

This whole discussion through the years has only ever been because a tiny number of people prefer SL to match RL sizes. One of those who have argued for RL sizes through the years is in this thread. At least she has an actual reason for the preference which, if it worked, would be excellent. I can't criticise the reason, which is to get more usage out of a parcel of land. What I can say about it is that it doesn't need things to be RL-sized to do it. It only needs things to be smaller. RL sizes are irrelevant for that particular reason.

I generally find that this discussion more often returns because some people start thinking a five foot tall avatar is "child sized" when by any metric they're still actual giants.

Let's consider it. We can scale things by numbers - which are observable facts - or we can scale them based on an arbitrary feeling of "this seems about the right size". If we are going to have any kind of consistency, we'll have to go with the former, and those numbers are the same as their RL counterparts.

[Phil Deakins]

38 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Theresa Tennyson sighs.

I acknowledged that. My point is that making avatars taller doesn't help matters; in fact, it makes things worse by raising the camera rail.

Sorry. I did read your post.

We don't make avatars taller (taller than what?). We make them to suit our surroundings, and SL is our surroundings, and that's a totally different world to RL.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with anyone wanting to surround themselves with dimensions from another world. It's entirely their choice. All I've ever said is that, because of the camera's fixed view, it cannot work satisfactorily in RL-sized rooms - except in RL-sized huge rooms, of course

I would really like to see someone successfully maneuvering within a 9' high 12'x12' furnished room. The furniture being a double bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. I won't even insist on bedside cabinets By "successfully" I mean without bumping into or walking over things. If someone can set that up, I'd love to see it.

[Phil Deakins]

10 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Let's consider it. We can scale things by numbers - which are observable facts - or we can scale them based on an arbitrary feeling of "this seems about the right size". If we are going to have any kind of consistency, we'll have to go with the former, and those numbers are the same as their RL counterparts.

I disagree

If we go by the former - numbers - we could scale at 1.5SL to 1RL, since it would suit the workings of SL better. There is no reason to choose 1:1.

Also, why choose RL to compare with? It's a completely different world. Why not choose Mars or the Moon, where the gravity is much less that RL's, so people would naturally grow taller 😊