Female avis are getting smaller and smaller? 0.0

[Phil Deakins]

Streuth! This is a thread about female avatars becoming shorter, and I've become one of the top posters in it, even though I don't spend any time with any avatars, female or male, in SL, so I've no idea if they are becoming shorter or not <sigh>

I think it's time for me to take my leave of this thread - unless someone sets up that 12'x12'x9' furnished room and demonstrates that it can walked around without bumping into or walking over stuff, that is. I really want to see that

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

With Phil leaving the thread there's no reason for this post.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Theresa Tennyson

[Phil Deakins]

17 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

At least I was able to find my original post rather than type all that out again.

Well done!

17 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You say that as if the "surroundings" had any sort of coherent scale, and, as I pointed out, they don't.

That's right, they don't. It's not me who want's them to be scaled. It's me who says that SL and RL are totally different worlds, so there's no reason to try to copy RL. I say nothing against making things smaller than they have tended to be in SL through the years though. I only talk against generally trying to match RL sizes in SL.

I don't even suggest that everyone and everything in SL should be in the same range of measurements. SL is a unique world and whatever each person wants in it, is exactly right. There is a never any need to even consider what the RL sizes are. Some people do, and that's absolutely fine, just as some people prefer to be tiny or huge. It's all absolutely fine.

It's the idea that things should be RL-sized in SL, or that they are better being RL-sized in SL, that I speak against.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

With Phil leaving the thread there's no reason for this post.

He was only making an empty threat. Don't go!

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

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

A lot of things in Second Life are influenced by the default camera and why it works the way it does.

First of all, let's consider human eyesight. The view from our eyes really can be described as two separate things. There's a central area that has the perspective of a medium-focal-length camera lens that shows us what's directly in front of our face in high detail, and this is surrounded by our peripheral-vision area which has the view angle of a very wide-angle lens. We can't see much detail in this area but it does mean that we can detect a cat-colored blur near our feet which will signal us to look down and therefore avoid stepping on the cat (usually.)

It's not easy to duplicate this with a camera lens. If we use one with the same focal length/perspective as our sharp field of vision it will be like we're looking through a small window and we'll miss a lot of our surroundings. If we use a lens with the field-of-view that matches our peripheral vision it will be an ultra-wide-angle lens that will make the world look quite bizarre, with near things huge and even moderately-distant things tiny.

The default SL camera is a compromise. It's a moderately wide-angle lens which has effects on close-up perspective but the distant view will look fairly normal. It still doesn't have the same field-of-view as our full vision so to widen the view without making perspective very strange it's mounted behind us.

If it was pointed straight ahead a lot of our view would be full of unimportant sky instead of the the surface our feet are about to hit, which is more important. Therefore, it's tilted down to bias our view that way.

If this tilted camera was at our eye level we'd lose a lot of data from the middle-distance which we see when we look around normally in real-life. Therefore, it's mounted higher to also show the middle distance area. We can move the camera forward and backward on an invisible "rail."

This all explains things like people giving their avatars tiny heads and long legs. With the way the camera works it will tend to make our heads look somewhat too large and our legs somewhat too short in standard view, so people will tend to try and "fix" these which will make them look odd to someone else.

It's also the reason why you can be in a room and the perspective will make it look like a standard human space most of the time, and then you get hit in the chin by the doorknob when you get close to the walls.

So, it is what it is and is a reasonable solution to a problem that doesn't have a good answer without a VR headset. I use it but I don't claim it's perfect; if I didn't have a scroll-wheel mouse I would have a very different opinion of it. However, I haven't seen any huge improvements when using other camera positions I've tried.

[Love Zhaoying]

We can change the camera settings to compensate for all these issues - except for when it ends up on the "wrong" side of a wall, correct? (That was my impression from studying it a few years ago for some scripting.)

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

We can change the camera settings to compensate for all these issues - except for when it ends up on the "wrong" side of a wall, correct? (That was my impression from studying it a few years ago for some scripting.)

Yes, but there's a general tendency toward losing on the roundabout what you gain on the swings. Another problem with Second Life is it doesn't know what a "wall" is. In The Sims 2/3/4 the view is similar but since the build system has more built-in criteria it can recognize walls and automatically hide them so spaces can be made smaller.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Another problem with Second Life is it doesn't know what a "wall" is.

Yeah, that was my memory too.

[Phil Deakins]

47 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

We can change the camera settings to compensate for all these issue

We can't.

In RL we avoid things in small spaces by moving our eyes and our heads, changing our view. The camera can't emulate that, regardless of where we place it. We can't get the camera's view to change like our eyes and heads move to change what we see.

Try it yourself. Make a 12'x12'x9' hollow wooden box with a ceiling, put an RL-sized double bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers in it (wooden boxes), set your avatar's height to a typical RL height, and set your camera to wherever you want it to be, and see if you can walk around inside the room without bumping into, and walking over, things.

I once did that for a forum thread, and proved what I'm saying is true. All we do in the forum is talk about it, but the proof is in actually doing it, so let's stop talking, and let's see it actually working satisfactorily please. You (or anyone) set it up, and TP me to it so I can see you move freely around inside it. Or post the URL and anyone who is interested can try it for themselves.

Unless RL-sized rooms and avatars can be demonstrated to work satisfactorily, it has to be accepted that I can't. I don't see that there's anything more to discuss about it until there's a demo.

ETA:
Alternatively, if anyone who thinks it can be done would like me to set up such a room, I'll do it, and you can demonstrate your ability to move around in it. Just let me know.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

57 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

We can change the camera settings to compensate for all these issue

We can't.

You did, in fact, leave out the "except" part of my quote. 

[Phil Deakins]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You did, in fact, leave out the "except" part of my quote. 

I did but it was intentional because we can't change the camera settings to compensate for all the other issues. I was writing about the need for our eyes and heads to move in RL for us to move around inside a smallish space like a room without bumping into things, and that the SL camera can't do that, so we do end up bumping into things.

The bumping into things is often just stubbing our toes on them because we can't see the bottom. Things like beds and stools, which are low to the ground, get walked over.

ETA:
If the camera can be set to avoid things like that, I would love someone to post the setting numbers. I would gladly admit to being wrong if it can be shown that I'm wrong.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Theresa Tennyson]

16 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Try it yourself. Make a 12'x12'x9' hollow wooden box with a ceiling, put an RL-sized double bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers in it (wooden boxes), set your avatar's height to a typical RL height, and set your camera to wherever you want it to be, and see if you can walk around inside the room without bumping into, and walking over, things.

 

And this relates to avatar heights how? It's exactly the same situation that people with the shorter avatars deal with and we're not seeing them hang themselves from a sour apple tree in the despair of futility. Apparently it's not stopping them from making their avatars RL size.

BTW, I actually tried your room some time ago with T07, the seven-year-old version of Theresa who's a little over 4 feet tall. She did pretty well.

[Love Zhaoying]

26 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Try it yourself. Make a 12'x12'x9' hollow wooden box with a ceiling, put an RL-sized double bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers in it (wooden boxes), set your avatar's height to a typical RL height, and set your camera to wherever you want it to be, and see if you can walk around inside the room without bumping into, and walking over, things.

Are we allowed to script our camera, or can we only use viewer settings? Checking for "gotcha's", caveats, etc.

[Phil Deakins]

@Theresa Tennyson

That experiment, which nobody seems willing to actually do, even though it only takes a few minutes to set up, only relates to avatar sizes because the camera can't be set to allow RL-sized rooms to work satisfactorily, so larger than RL-rooms are necessary, which means larger furniture, and that necessitates larger avatars. And we're back where we began

 

[Phil Deakins]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

Are we allowed to script our camera, or can we only use viewer settings? Checking for "gotcha's", caveats, etc.

No scripting lol. We are talking about everyday normal living in SL. Positioning the camera is the only thing you can do. That's the only thing that has ever been suggested.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, Phil Deakins said:

@Theresa Tennyson

That experiment, which nobody seems willing to actually do, even though it only takes a few minutes to set up, only relates to avatar sizes because the camera can't be set to allow RL-sized rooms to work satisfactorily, so larger than RL-rooms are necessary, which means larger furniture, and that necessitates larger avatars. And we're back where we began

 

T07 looks up at me with plaintive eyes. "You just SAID I did it, didn't you?"

Theresa Tennyson smiles ruefully at her younger self, saying "You'll understand when you're older," well knowing that she's lying.

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

No scripting lol. We are talking about everyday normal living in SL. Positioning the camera is the only thing you can do. That's the only thing that has ever been suggested.

Then it's not a meaningful challenge, sorry. Most avatars use some kind of HUD or other, and camera scripted HUDs aren't difficult (even if it's just a tiny or invisible cube). So, no thanks on your challenge.

[Ceka Cianci]

You're actually better off making a 12x12x9 room rather than hollowing  a 12x12x9 prim out because the 12x12x9 will be on the outside not the inside of the room..

Sorry ,I'm just being bratty this morning.. hehehe

 

Seriously though.. I'd just make the room where it fits rather than trying to squeeze into something.

stuff being too big has never been a problem for me.. if something is too small I just make it bigger, where we can't do that with a room without it costing serious monies and a lot of dust and noise and life being interrupted in RL..

When you gonna be done?

Two weeks..

When's the plumber getting here?

Two weeks.

well what about mah cabinets?

Two weeks.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Theresa Tennyson]

27 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

No scripting lol. We are talking about everyday normal living in SL. Positioning the camera is the only thing you can do. That's the only thing that has ever been suggested.

Here's one of the family businesses - a trailer park. The rooms in the trailers are pretty close to your dimensions; the ceiling heights are even a touch lower than 9', I think. The trailers are 4 meters out to out.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hochkonig/226/39/79

Why don't a few of you come down and check them out? (I told Jolene people might be coming or else it could get ugly - and no, this isn't an attempt to rent them out.) They work; they're tight, but then so is a real-life trailer and the furniture is probably even oversized by a bit.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Theresa Tennyson

[Rowan Amore]

Who the heck uses default camera position?   In fact, LL really needs to redo that.  Why haven't they?  

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Rowan Amore said:

Who the heck uses default camera position?   In fact, LL really needs to redo that.  Why haven't they?  

They don't have to deal with it or the impact it has on everything we do.

[Rowan Amore]

This is my default rear view.  Basically, I've used this similar view since forever.  I can navigate pretty well in almost any size building.   The only issue, at times, is stairs if they are too narrow.  

 

[Ceka Cianci]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

This is my default rear view.  Basically, I've used this similar view since forever.  I can navigate pretty well in almost any size building.   The only issue, at times, is stairs if they are too narrow.  

 

what do you have yours set at? I think mine are higher up and farther back..

I'm usually always using the cam and move controls when I'm not moving around a lot.. But when I am walking  I'm higher up and farther back..

[kali Wylder]

I cam almost all the time and use the double click tp to get around.

[Rowan Amore]

I think this is what it's set at.  When I open my rear view and position, these are the numbers there.  I just played around with the controls until it was set how I prefer then chose Set as Preset  Rear View so when I use the camera control floater and hit the rear view, that's what I see.   This is how I see when I'm walking around so ceilings could be lower and I'd have no problem.

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by Rowan Amore