Problem creating oblong sculpties

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I'm glad the desk issue is over.

I'll post one final thing about it though, not to have the last word, but to show you one can make a desk which is just as functional as the two I made earlier, with 6 vertices and 8 faces, the amount of the tetrahedron desks Chosen made. Take in mind the connection to the floor looks like it should be a very strong one, but we ignored most of forces already.

Different ways to look at the object. Modellingwise, it's the desk I made earlier, but with another 2 vertices welded together. Geometrically, it's a tetradedron and a pyramid upside down.

You already said you understood the triangle is the object to work with so I don't mean to be annoying about it.... but this is an example of why that is the case. Modellingwise, you could construct this desk out of 3 tetrahedrons,  then remove all inner geometry. Or one pyramid and a tetrahedron and remove the hidden faces. Or a box with some vertices welded together....or any other shape (with more vertices and faces than a box) with some of them welded together. That's why I hammer on you and any other builder to stop thinking in prims.

So that covered "datapoints" I think. That still doesn't answer the question if this setup is the most renderfriendly one. From the camera angle used for the above picture, which is the most common one I'd say, only two faces are turned away from the cam, so six are showing. The two tetrahedrons desk has one less showing I think.

I still prefer a "normal" desk. Even one with four "normal" legs and a "normal" top can easily be made with a landimpact of 1. And you'd only need 8 faces for each leg and 12 (or even 10 if you delete the bottom as Chosen suggested)  for the top to make it look real. that's 44 faces opposed to 2048 for a sculpted one.

We don't have to minimize everything. The graphics cards, servers, routers and all things involved can handle quite a bit these days.

Couple of examples with tetrahedrons. I can think of a chair you can sit on quite comfortably. Or a boxlike wall with triangular doors you described earlier I think. I don't like the looks of either though:)

Let's move on now:)

@Chosen

You said something quite contradictory. You said the base shouldn't be the unit, but the avatar, no matter what its size is. However you later say the cubit, based on a part of that very avatar is the poorest choice there is. I'd say it's the preferred one in that case, assuming most avatars are more or less similair in dimensions.

I don't see any easy solution to the whole unit/scale/proportion issue in SL (or ANY solution altogether really), Btw I can perfectly live with the meter, like yourself.

I can't argue on any other thing you had to say about camera and movement issues between RL and virtual life, SL especially. The only things that seem to transfer between the two are either very small objects, like handheld ones or huge ones, like cathedrals. Things like houses don't transfer at all, which makes it nearly impossible to make RL sized furniture aswell.

[Josh Susanto]

>I can't imagine why you think simply renaming the unit would change anything. 

Changing the name could end some of the disagreement about how important it is to use it as an actual meter.

To clarify, I think I misspoke in the last post. The half-meter default cube is what I wanted to see defined as a cubit; the current Linden meter being 2 cubits. 

>Why not call it flibberdygibbit, or a quackamazoo, or a thingamabob?>I do have to say, though, if you absolutely must pick a name, then "cubit" would be among the worst of all worst possible choices.  A cubit is not a fixed unit of measure.  It's the length of a human forearm.

I have understood it to be the forearm including the extended hand, as taken from the living Pharoah's body. I may have this wrong. My idea is to use the avatar implied by the Linden measuring tape as being the living Pharoah.

The idea that it does not correspond to a fixed historical unit is actually one of the advantages, since it both puts objects into a more consistent range of scale, and allows a lot of existing content to be defined as cubit-compliant without any clear basis for further dispute. I suppose LL could also issue some statement about "recommended" scale, giving the cubit a preferred RL length, probably in the middle of the historical range for this unit. That is, it ends at least some arguments, while not breaking quite as much content as doing things other ways suggested. LL has already done no worse with the meter, in any case.

As I've said, I somewhat prefer the idea of just applying the meter more consistently, but it's a bit late for LL to start doing right when it comes to that. Ideally, I might like an edit button that allows individual items to be set either to "metric" or "Egyptian" at any time.

>I'm perfectly content with the word "meter", as it literally means "unit of measure".  That's all we're talking about, units.  Exactly how many of them it takes to equal the height of a ceiling, or the length of a football field, doesn't particularly matter.  All that is important is that we all do have a fixed standard unit, against which to compare everything and everything else.

 As I've said, I somewhat prefer the idea of simply agreeing on the meter. I'm just not sure whether we can actually get that to happen.

(

I appreciate the camera/ceiling issue. But making avatars bigger to match the higher ceilings seems like a rather inelegant solution as compared to just lowering the camera, or at least providing that as an easier option than what people mostly have now.)

>Who said anything about making avatars bigger to match higher ceilings?

That's not necessarily why people are making bigger avatars, I know. They are encouraged to make bigger avatars to match bigger objects in general, while the bigger objects have partly been made bigger in order to allow them to manouver less clumsily. Repeating this process endlessly would cause eveything to eventually become unmanageably large. Fortunately, there are some real limits to that, which I think are close to being reached right now. In any case, the poorly-considered Linden measuring tape, itself, seems already to defeat the whole purpose of the high default camera angle. I should have focused more on that.

>Assuming a "meter" is a meter, the average avatar in SL is about 10-15% taller than the average RL human. That's tends to be the sweet spots for best body proportions.  Even the very tallest avatar you can make (without putting it on stilts) is 2.5 meters tall, while ceilings tend to be anywhere from 4 to 10 meters high, or 60- 300% above realistic height. Two are completely unrelated.

Not completely. That practically no ceilings are any lower than that relates both to camera angle, and to the fact that most avatars are metrically gigantic. Ceilings aren't a major scale issue, though, provided that we're happy to make everything tall and skinny compared to RL. The scale issue comes properly into focus in the question of how much effective space exists on a sim horizontally.

>I mentioned avatars have to be a little taller than real humans, in order to arrive at correct body proportions. That has nothing directly to do with ceiling height.

It doesn't help. 

>Also as I said in that same post, the reason ceilings need to be WAY higher in SL (and in games and other virtual worlds) than they do in RL is almost entirely because of freedom of view. Low ceilings interfere with camera placement and camera movement, period. Simply lowering the camera to try to compensate won't do. Also as I said, even in first person view, realistic ceiling heights feel cramped and restrictive.

Couldn't that be solved with better camera options, rather than by raising ceiling quite so much? I have a bunch of other dislikes about camera function that are just as serious as the ceiling problem.

>There are necessary differences between any simulation and the real thing. 

Of course. If there were not, it would not qualify as simulation.

(More reasons I don't spend a lot of time in houses. Making the room bigger makes some sense, except that people then also make their avatars bigger and we're stuck with the same problem as before, just with less room on our land.)

>People don't make their avatars bigger in response to bigger rooms. Nobody ever says, "Wow, this room is so big, I better step up my avatar size."

Not specifically bigger rooms. Also bigger cars and other things which are bigger. Aside from body proportions looking less natural at a metrically correct size, other things look or just plain feel weird at that size. Close to the ground, people and objects seem to fall a rate that, for me, seems to support cubit physics over meter physics. Again, I could be wrong about this, too. What have you noticed about falling?

>Most people, myself included, tend to make avatars large because the larger sizes happen to be friendlier to arriving at realistic body proportions than the smaller sizes. Some do it simply because they don't realize that in-world measuring devices measure eye height, rather than top-of-head height.  Others do it, because they think giantism is fitting for whatever characeter traits they want their avatar's appearance to suggest.  That's really it.

Understood. The better appearance of the larger av's is one of the things I think counts in favor of the cubit. But I'd rather see LL provide some better option assume the current avatar scale is Egyptian, and press a button to size it down to metric without harming the proportions.

 >To be well navigable, the footprint of a room in SL needs to be 25-50% bigger than it would be in RL. Even the largest avatar you can make (not counting attachments) doesn't take up 25-50% more floor space than a real human.

Navigability is only one reason the rooms are larger. A lot of people just want larger rooms. Especially if they live in cities in RL, as I imagine at least about half of them do. Some of the extra room space is explained by navigability, some by the avatars being larger, and some by people just preferring larger rooms.

>Ease of navigation has almost nothing to do with avatar size. Try it for yourself. Make an avatar shape with all the settings zeroed out, so it's as small as it can be. Walk around a room. Now maximize all the settings, so the avatar is as large as it can be. Walk around the same room. You won't notice much difference. The controller node that carries the avatar around doesn't particularly care about the avatar's size.

I have tried that, actually. What I found, personally, was that the navigator feels the least unnatural with the largest avatar. At least being big potentially explains some of the clumsiness. In spite of that, I preferred a lot of things about having a smaller avatar. When I made it really tiny, though, social interactions were even weirder than they are with a gigantic menacing head-hunter. After that I started noticing more how weird people are about height in RL, too. At greater than average height, it would never have occurred to me not to respect someone on the basis of physical stature, but I started to see such behavior everywhere in RL also. It's disgusting. No wonder people want taller avatars. 

(There is a way to suspend belief, though, which uses land more efficiently, and a way that uses land less efficiently.)

>If you want to suspend it so far that you don't care about bumping into things, or about the ability to have an unobstructed view of the scene, then have at it. I think you'll find it pretty lonely, though, as not many people will want to have that kind of experience.

I prefer to spend most of my time alone in RL, too. Or, more recently, alone with my infant son. As you've probably noted, I'm not really a people person. I mostly like making stuff and seeing other stuff that is made, so interacting people who are also trying to make stuff is interesting. Dance clubs are not.

>I really don't need to hear what fantasies you have about your avatar's genitalia. Let's just leave that one alone, m'kay?

The idea with that is just to ironically deflate the implication that nothing more than adolescent power fantasies are being played out by having a huge tribal warrior avatar. If people can't seem to talk to the cannibal like an adult, the shrimp-d1ck is one of the things that tells them there must be something more complex going on with me than maybe they assumed.  I have other ways.OK. Enough about that. The avatar relates to my focus on cryptosynesthetics by being a spokesman for things that should have a complex tactile aspect and possibly some kind of a smell; especially old things.

 (I also have an alt which I usually keep set to realistic dimensions so that I can give at least some real consideration to matters of scale and proportion when I think it might be important.)

>You keep an entire alt account, just to change appearance? Why not simply change outfits on the same avatar?

Not just to change appearance. There are other legitimate uses for alts. But I do like one avatar to have a fixed personality and the other one to be used more freely. 

 (In principle, this might be acheived by using 2 layers of normal-mapped surface; 1 to function as a sort of window texture, and the other to function as the view.)

>I think you're in for disappointment, if that's what you're expecting from normal maps. All they do is suggest extra surface detail, nothing more. At best, the setup you describe would look as if you parked one of your relief sculptures an inch or two outside the window.

Possibly, yes. But there are optical effects in RL that actually work a little better in SL, due to the monocular perspective, such as the circular panorama thing I've been seeing so much of this year. My idea is to combine multiple things that confuse the eye, as is often done by RL illusionists. What I found with the museum display items is that the surface of the content image appears less unrealistic and its contours seem to be enhanced by putting a layer of glass in front which as a nonrepetitive surface. This enhances the perception of depth in panning past the object, and somewhat breaks up the perception of pixel grain and hard edge limits of the featured item. Limiting angular perspective by putting the thing in a box is pretty obvious, but I suppose it's worth mentioning, too. I'd like to go a step further, though, naturally.

>It sounds like you're trying really hard to envision ways of preserving your existing work habits, "Slap texture on surface, push button to make relief". I'd recommend you concentrate your attentions on learning to make real 3D models instead.

I'd still be looking for ways to exploit the laziness of human visual processing, no matter what I would be making.

[Josh Susanto]

>You already said you understood the triangle is the object to work with so I don't mean to be annoying about it.... but this is an example of why that is the case.

Probably the perfect example, yes. Compelling.

>The two tetrahedrons desk has one less showing I think.

That is a decidely minor point I will continue to make about tetrahedrons if given the chance.

But I realize I need to confine my enthusiasm about tetrahedrons to projects which intend to eschew rectangles. 

There more I'm looking at this whole discussion, the more I see it comes down less even than to the question of whether to focus on triangles as it does the question of how important rectangles may be to consumers. That is: if people actually want rectangles, it's going to be inefficient to try to make them with tetrahedrons. It would probably make more sense to position the requisite rectangles and then try to produce anything else with triangles.

>I still prefer a "normal" desk. Even one with four "normal" legs and a "normal" top can easily be made with a landimpact of 1. 

Understood. The possible efficiency of a simpler desk assumes it's going to be part of a larger object, such as a row or column of such desks. 

>We don't have to minimize everything. The graphics cards, servers, routers and all things involved can handle quite a bit these days.

Also understood. My main interest in more efficient items is that they stand to provide more options at the opposite end of the efficiency spectrum where people might want that. Every piece of data you don't have to apply to your desk, for example, you can potentially apply to the objects on top of it. Or you can offset the cost of an elaborate victorian desk by cutting some data out of your building. The more natural-looking items such as I tend to make suck up a lot of data, I know. So I feel responsible to offer people ways to offset this effect with more efficient objects of a more artificial look. It's ultimately about consumer options, not about dictating what people should have or use. 

>Couple of examples with tetrahedrons. I can think of a chair you can sit on quite comfortably.

Pretty obvious, but good work, nonetheless. Thank you for acknowledging this.

>Or a boxlike wall with triangular doors you described earlier I think.

The wall is what I envisioned, except with one tetra pointed the other way. You'll see why.

>I don't like the looks of either though**Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" />

I'm not going to try to persuade you that you should like the looks of them.

I will point out that there might be some amount of adjustment to specific proportions which might be an aesthetic improvement, that color and texture do matter a little bit, and that we're looking at these things without any larger context.

If the context is "heartless futuristic architecture" or "extraterrestrial architecture", these are probably appropriate, aren't they?

So far I haven't tried to help people build their dream homes. I've mostly helped them to construct environments they would not expect or realistically hope to inhabit in RL.  I grant you that this style of building is probably not in anyone's dream-home aesthetic. 

> I'd say it's the preferred one in that case,

Thanks, but I'm not going to run with that ball. I can't defend my cubit idea as the best solution; I only intend to defend it as being better than providing no remedy at all to the current state of things.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Ok, even though you apparantly missed the point, I think the air has almost cleared..so I'll be brief. When I say: think in and build with triangles, that is because it's the shape your hard- and software thinks in and it will "fake" any shape possible, as long as you use enough of them. So the point I was making wasn't thinking in triangular shapes, but in surfaces built out of triangles. That ofcourse includes a square. And a square is something a human being can easily think in.

The cubit? well I was merely passing the ball back to Chosen with that. I don't know if it would be a good or bad unit, as Chosen said, a unit is just a unit. It was just that IF you want the avatar to be the decisive factor in units, the unit should be based on the avatar ofcourse and the cubit is. So is a foot, or an inch, which would be fine if they could be used in a decimal system, but a system is not a unit. (and ofcourse a foot or inch used in a decimal system would create the biggest confusion)

The only solution or patch is selling all your items modifyable, which is what I do in almost all cases. That way people can scale it up or down when neccecary to fit their surroundings. With mesh this can be tricky, since the bigger the object, the more landimpact it will have.

And I completely agree on the shape issue, I know the fact I don't like the look of them doesn't mean others feel the same way. In surreal or science fiction scenes (which I don't prefer as my surroundings) they would probably not look out of place. I'm boring with that, give me a nice realistic looking scene and I'm happy.

[Chosen Few]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

@Chosen

You said something quite contradictory. You said the base shouldn't be the unit, but the avatar, no matter what its size is. However you later say the cubit, based on a part of that very avatar is the poorest choice there is. I'd say it's the preferred one in that case, assuming most avatars are more or less similair in dimensions.

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You seem to have misunderstood me a little, Kwak.  All I meant was that if the size of the average avatar happens to have more units in it than what the size of a RL person has in RL units, then the least problematic way to define the situation is simply that the virtual units are a little smaller than the RL ones.

If we apply that logic, then it's perfectly OK if that couch measures a little higher than its RL counterpart, or if the amount of floor space in a home is somewhat generous. If the unit is smaller, it simply takes more of them to measure a the same object at its actual size.

The reason "cubit" can't work, if we assume the RL definition, is because it's not a fixed size.  My cubit isn't the same as your cubit.  If we were all existing in isolation, that would be fine.  But since we're a community, we need a fixed standard.

 

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

The only things that seem to transfer between the two are either very small objects, like handheld ones or huge ones, like cathedrals. Things like houses don't transfer at all, which makes it nearly impossible to make RL sized furniture aswell.

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I'd argue that handheld items and giant cathedrals don't directly transfer either.  Granted, it's a little harder to notice the discrepancy with those kinds of things, but it's still there.

[Chosen Few]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Changing the name could end some of the disagreement about how important it is to use it as an actual meter.

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OK, but considering nobody really uses it as an actual meter anyway, I don't know how a name change would improve anything.  Instead of newbies asking "How much bigger in meters does my SL house need to be than my RL house for it to look right?", they'd ask, "How many thingamabobs equal a RL meter, and how many of them should my house be in order to look right?".  It's the same question, no matter the name.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

To clarify, I think I misspoke in the last post. The

half-

meter default cube is what I wanted to see defined as a cubit; the current Linden meter being 2 cubits.

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I wouldn't have any problem in principle with the default cube being the base unit.  But what's to be gained by giving it such an inaccurate, and potentially confising name?  If you really think the word "meter" is the problem, why not just simply call it "unit", and leave it at that?

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

The idea that it does not correspond to a fixed historical unit is actually one of the advantages, since it both puts objects into a more consistent range of scale, and allows a lot of existing content to be defined as cubit-compliant without any clear basis for further dispute.

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You're saying that because it's less consistent it's more consistent?  That doesn't make any sense, Josh.

If I'm six feet tall, then a cubit for me is somewhere around 18 inches (assuming we include both forearm and hand).  If you're five feet tall, then a cubit for you is going to be somewhere around 15 inches.  Just how exactly are we supposed to get anything done as a community, with such discrepancies everywhere?

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

I suppose LL could also issue some statement about "recommended" scale, giving the cubit a preferred RL length, probably in the middle of the historical range for this unit. That is, it ends at least some arguments, while not breaking quite as much content as doing things other ways suggested. LL has already done no worse with the meter, in any case.

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You have to know that that would create infinitely MORE arguments than it could ever end.  We need a fixed unit of measure, period.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

As I've said, I somewhat prefer the idea of just applying the meter more consistently, but it's a bit late for LL to start doing right when it comes to that.

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The meter is applied in SL with absolute consistency.  A meter for me is the same as a meter for you.  It just happens that in any 3D simulation, certain things from the real world don't translate cleanly.  It's really not a problem.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Ideally, I might like an edit button that allows individual items to be set either to "metric" or "Egyptian" at any time.

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Right, because so many people understand ancient Egyptian measuring systems.  Yeah, that would make so much sense.  Come on, man; wasn't it you who earlier brought up the cubit as an example of obsoleteness?

Why do I suddenly feel like the dude from PCU? "You're majoring in a 5000 year old dead language?!"

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

As I've said, I somewhat prefer the idea of simply agreeing on the meter. I'm just not sure whether we can actually get that to happen.

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We already all DO agree on the meter.  That's what we all call the unit of measure that we all use every day in SL.

The mistake people make is in assuming it's the same thing as the RL unit that happens to have the same name.  It's not.  It can't be.

It wouldn't be the same thing as a RL cubit either, if it were called "cubit".

It's a unit.  Let it be.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

That's not necessarily why people are making bigger avatars, I know.

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Then why did you say it is?

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

They are encouraged to make bigger avatars to match bigger objects in general, while the bigger objects have partly been made bigger in order to allow them to manouver less clumsily.

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No, people make their avatars a certain size for the reasons I stated, which I really don't feel like repeating endlessly, just because you choose to ignore whatever I say the first several times I say it.  Objects like furniture and props are created to match the average avatar body size.   Objects like floors, doorways, etc., are scaled up for maneuverability, for reasons that have almost nothing to do with avatar body size.  Ceilings are raised for reasons that have even less to do with it.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Repeating this process endlessly would cause eveything to eventually become unmanageably large.

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The process you've described doesn't even happen, so how could it be repeated?

Let's say for the sake of argument, though, that it did happen, and that after X amount of cycles, we reach a point where the average  avatar is a kilometer tall, and the floor of a medium sized room is 10 kilometers wide.  How would that be functionally any different from what we have now?  We'd simply be measuring in hundreds and thousands instead of in ones and tens.  The manageability wouldn't change in any way (assuming land parcel sizes were also to get bigger, of course).

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

the poorly-considered Linden measuring tape, itself, seems already to defeat the whole purpose of the high default camera angle.

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How so? 

You seem to be, once again, assuming associations between things that are unrelated.  The default camera angle (which, by the way, you can change to be anything you want it to be) is set to give you a reasonably wide view of the scene.  That has nothing to do with any "measuring tape", and could never be "defeated" by one.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

That practically no ceilings are any lower than that relates both to camera angle, and to the fact that most avatars are metrically gigantic.

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I get the feeling you're just throwing "camera angle" into that sentence to appease me, to make it a little easier to stick to your guns on the avatar height part.  Look, it's a well known fact of game level design that a room whose ceiling is of realistic height will feel somewhat cramped, even if there are no human character models in it for reference.  It's just something about how we perceive the illusion of an immersive three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional screen.

You can see this for yourself, in every first person shooter game ever made.  In areas where the designers want you to feel in control (which will be the majority of areas), the ceilings will be absurdly high, by any RL architectural standard.  In places where where the designers want you to feel claustrophobic, closed in, possibly frightened, the ceilings will be lowered to normal height.

Here are a couple of quick examples.  Think about the feeling each image provokes.

In the above scene, we instantly know there's no danger.  We don't know what might come running through that door at any moment, but whatever it is, we're prepared.  We're one badass mofo, and we're going to make it through this area without breaking a sweat.  Let's go!

Now take a look at this:

Something scary is going to happen as soon as we go up those steps.  We just know it.  We're safe as long as we stay here on the landing, but once we go up there, something's going to get us.  Let's stay here a minute, collect ourselves, prepare our weapons, and muster up a little confidence before proceeding ever so slowly, with extreme caution.

Why do these two corridors envoke such entirely different feelings?  Granted, the lighting schemes are different, but try not to let that distract you.  That's merely icing on the already existing cakes. Here's what's really going on.

In the first image, the ceiling is very high, which makes us feel we're in control of our point of view. The stuff that might otherwise give us pause, such as the cob webs, the ransacked files and papers, are all just scenery.  Because the point of view is unobstructed vertically, all is well.

In the second image, however, the ceiling becomes realistic height when we get to the top of the stairs.  The landing is the calm before the storm, because the ceiling is still high as long as we remain there.  But as soon as we step up to the higher floor, the ceiling is going to get uncomfortably close to our central point of view.  There's danger up there, Will Robinson.  That corridor is a scary, scary place.

Notice, by the way, in that second image, the walls don't get any narrower at the top of the stairs.  Only the distance between the floor and the ceiling changes.  See, contrary to popular assumption, "the walls are closing in on me" isn't actually a particularly discomforting scenario.  There's nothing scary about walking down a narrow hallway, as long as the ceiling is high.  "The ceiling is coming down on me", however, is uncomfortable as hell, no matter how far apart the walls are.

Now here's the kicker.  In neither of the above images is there a human body visible for direct size reference.  All we have to go by is our apparent eye level (the height of the camera). 

In the first image, the vanishing point is near the bottom of that pentagon-shaped emblem on the door.  That makes the room about twice as tall as we are.  In the second image, the vanishing point is just above the floor, while we're still standing half a floor down.   That means once we climb those stairs, our own height is going to be about 3/4 of the ceiling height.  In RL, that translates to a very comfortable 8-foot ceiling, perfectly normal.  In the simulation, however, it won't be comfortable at all.

All of these same principles apply to SL.  In order to feel in control of the situation, we need to be able to have lots of headroom open, above our default point of view.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Couldn't that be solved with better camera options, rather than by raising ceiling

quite so much

? I have a bunch of other dislikes about camera function that are just as serious as the ceiling problem.

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SL already has the best camera controls of any realtime environment I've ever seen.  The behavior via the alt-mouse controls is just like how any single perspective camera is controlled in any full featured 3D modeling program.  (Specific key/button bindings differ, of course, but the actual controllability is the same.)

Please tell me you don't use the on-screen controls.  Those things are beyond awful.  I really wish LL would do away with them.  They're useless.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Not specifically bigger rooms. Also bigger cars and other things which are bigger.

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OK, allow me to rephrase. Nobody ever says, "Wow, this car is so big, I better step up my avatar size."

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Close to the ground, people and objects seem to fall a rate that, for me, seems to support cubit physics over meter physics. Again, I could be wrong about this, too. What have you noticed about falling?

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There's no such thing as "cubit physics" or "meter physics".  Physics is physics.  I have no idea what you mean.

As for the rate at which objects fall, it's an acceleration curve of roughly 10 units per second, per second.  That doesn't change, just by renaming the unit. 

If an object is 10 units off the ground, it will take about a second for it to reach the ground, after it starts falling.  If it's a meter off the ground, then it will take about half a second.

But here's the thing.  The time between the instant you click to release the object and the instant it actually appears to start falling can be highly variable.   Your viewer needs to tell the server you did the click.  The sever then needs to do its thing to acknowledge that information, perform the physics calculation, and transmit the results to your viewer, so the viewer can show you want happened.  There are a million chaotic factors including your computer, your network hardware, your internet connection, the internet itself, LL's ISP, LL's internet connection, LL's network, the specific server doing the calculations, etc., that will affect the timing.

 

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Josh Susanto wrote:

The better appearance of the larger av's is one of the things I think counts in favor of the cubit.

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Nothing counts in favor of the cubit, unless all avatars' arms are the exact same size.

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Some of the extra room space is explained by navigability, some by the avatars being larger, and some by people just preferring larger rooms.

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Whatever amount may be "explained by avatars being larger" I'd imagine it's so miniscule, it's not statistically significant.  I certainly have never sized a room based on that, and I've never heard anyone else talk about doing so.

 

---

Josh Susanto wrote:

When I made it really tiny, though, social interactions were even weirder than they are with a gigantic menacing head-hunter. After that I started noticing more how weird people are about height in RL, too. At greater than average height, it would never have occurred to me not to respect someone on the basis of physical stature, but I started to see such behavior everywhere in RL also. It's disgusting. No wonder people want taller avatars.

---

Now you've hit on a really interesting part of human psychology.  We're somewhat hard wired to respect height.  When we're young, our parents are bigger than us, and they have authority over us.  Lions and tigers and grizzly bears are bigger than us, so we don't get in their way.  As a survival mechanism, it works.

It can be really unfortunate for the short among us, however.  The flip side of that same wiring tells us that as adults, we are to have authority over children, who incidentally start out smaller than we are.  As such, we tend to mistreat short adults, without even realizing it.

There used to be a really interesting program on one of the Discovery channels, called The Human Sexes.  In one episode, they focused on how height relates to sexuality, pair bonding, and ultimately, evolution.  A bunch of women were each individually introduced to a several men, and then asked to rank the men in order of which ones they would most like to date.  Among the men was a very rich, very intelligent, very handsome, and very personable doctor, who happened to be only five feet tall.  When shown this man's headshot, and given his background information, all the women were of course very interested in him.  He was at ranked at the top, or very near the top, by all of them.  But after seeing him in person, they all ranked him dead last, without exception. 

When the researchers would ask the women why they changed their minds, the universal response was, "He's just so short."  When the researchers would say things like, "You are aware he's a doctor, that he's wealthy, and you stated you thought he was handsome from his picture. You also appeared to get along very well with him, in conversation.  Is his height really enough of a factor to override all that?" they would respond again with, "But he's just so SHORT."

Lack of height, it would seem, is the one and only unforgivable trait in a male.  The stupid men, the ugly men, the poor men, all came out ahead of this short man, who in all other respects, was defined as an amazing catch, by every woman.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that shorter avatars get treated differently than taller ones.  Intellectually, we can agree it's more than a little silly, especially considering the avatar is not the person.  But people don't operate on intellect alone.

 

---

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'd still be looking for ways to exploit the laziness of human visual processing, no matter what I would be making.

---

Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds more like you're looking for ways to exploit your own laziness in terms of the amount of work it takes to make any one item.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

---

Chosen Few wrote:

You seem to have misunderstood me a little, Kwak.  All I meant was that if the size of the average avatar happens to have more units in it than what the size of a RL person has in RL units, then the least problematic way to define the situation is simply that the virtual units are a little smaller than the RL ones.

[...]

The reason "cubit" can't work, if we assume the RL definition, is because it's not a fixed size.  My cubit isn't the same as your cubit.  If we were all existing in isolation, that would be fine.  But since we're a community, we need a fixed standard.

---

I did misunderstand you then yes, but your foot is different from mine, so is your thumb (that's how we call an inch here) yet they are fixed units, I figured the same was the case for the cubit. Anyway, I think we agreed on the fact a unit is a unit, nothing more nothing less.

 

---

Chosen Few wrote:

I'd argue that handheld items and giant cathedrals don't directly transfer either.  Granted, it's a little harder to notice the discrepancy with those kinds of things, but it's still there.

---

Then you misunderstood me here in return, I wasn't clear plus I mixed some things up. Handheld items and cathedrals opposed to normal houses can be the same shape as they can be in RL, bigger though, let's say the 10-15% you mentioned, so compared to the SL avatar it would be the same as in RL. This is not the case with normal houses, where the ratios between SL and RL ceilingheight, SL and RL floorspace, SL and RL doorways, SL and RL stairwidths etc are all different. It's simply not possible to scale a RL house and get a satisfying SL result. I hope that's clearer. Furniture can be scaled without any distortions, I wasn't right when I said otherwise. The ratio doesn't match any other it seems though.

[Chosen Few]

---

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

I did misunderstand you then yes, but your foot is different from mine, so is your thumb (that's how we call an inch here) yet they are fixed units, I figured the same was the case for the cubit.

---

I would imagine the cubit originally probably worked the same way things like feet and thumbs did in olden times.  There was no standardization in the beginning.  A foot was different for each craftsman.  It so happens that the the length of a human foot tends to be about 12 times the width of a human thumb, so the thumb, or inch, as 1/12 of the foot eventually became a useful "rule of thumb", if you'll pardon the pun.  The standardization the foot to its present length came much later.

If the cubit was, as Josh says, standardized to the pharoh's arm, that also probably came later, as the need for SOME sort of standard arised.  Originally, it likely varied from craftsman to craftsman.  Whether or not it was ever standardized completely, I don't know.  I do know that graduated copper measuring blocks have been unearthed, and that it's assumed they are representative of cubits.  But I don't know if enough of them have been found to be indicative of any lasting standard.

 

---

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

Then you misunderstood me here in return, I wasn't clear plus I mixed some things up. Handheld items and cathedrals opposed to normal houses can be the same shape as they can be in RL, bigger though, let's say the 10-15% you mentioned, so compared to the SL avatar it would be the same as in RL. This is not the case with normal houses, where the ratios between SL and RL ceilingheight, SL and RL floorspace, SL and RL doorways, SL and RL stairwidths etc are all different. It's simply not possible to scale a RL house and get a satisfying SL result. I hope that's clearer. Furniture can be scaled without any distortions, I wasn't right when I said otherwise. The ratio doesn't match any other it seems though.

---

Gotcha.  Yeah, some things are just a question of uniform scaling, while other things do have to be scaled disproportionately in order to work.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

"Uniform scaling"..those were the words I was looking for:)

[Squall0000]

i used the land buttons option to send all my things back to me and it got rid of all of it and im pissed now because that was alot of L$ that just vanished

[wherorangi]

---

Squall0000 wrote:

i used the land buttons option to send all my things back to me and it got rid of all of it and im pissed now because that was alot of L$ that just vanished

---

they will be in your inventory as coalesced objects

heres a link that tells how to retrieve and restore them: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/How_to_retrieve_coalesced_items

[Squall0000]

Only 3 items out of 17 were returned

[wherorangi]

did you rez the coalesced objects ?

[Squall0000]

It doesn't show the item

[Pamela Galli]

Being a little inquisitive, aren't you, wherorangi?

[Squall0000]

Sorry i dont like my stuff being gone

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If you have rezzed out all the coalesced objects and you items are still missing, don't panic.  Sometimes it takes a day or two for returned objects to show up in your inventory.

Sometimes a sim will place objects at the <0,0,0> location coordinates.  You can check there too.

Relog to see if they show up now.  If not, clear your cache and relog again and let your inventory rebuild.

Hopefully some of the missing objects were copy and should still be in your inventory.  If there were but you don't see them, see if there is a redelivery terminal at the merchants in world store that will redeliver them.  If no terminal exists the merchant may be willing to send copies to you if you explain what happened.  Note this is not true of no copy objects.

If none of the above works, and you are a premium member, you can file a support ticket and LL may be able to help you.

The lesson learned here is never return objects to yourself using the button in the land tools.  Always pick them up one at a time and what your inventory to make sure the appear in there when you do.

[wherorangi]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Being a little inquisitive, aren't you, wherorangi?

---

(:

i am pretty nosey as you know

and I usual always start with the basics and work forward from there

Amethyst has the working forward part covered so am hopeful that Squall will end up with a resolution

[Squall0000]

I didn't get the coalesced item

[Amethyst Jetaime]

A coalesced object is a group or bundle of objects that are not linked but were picked up or returned as one object.  Land tools return things as coalesced objects.

Look in your inventory for an object that has an icon that looks like a stack of cubes forming a box.  There may be more than one.  They would be in your Lost and Found or Object folder.  

Go someplace where you can rezz at least as many prims that you returned to yourself and rez this or these object(s) out.  You'll find a lot of your things in the rezzed bundle and you can pick them up one by one.

[Squall0000]

I dont have that in my inventory I used the search bar to look after I manually looked over all 3k items one at a time

[Pamela Galli]

---

wherorangi wrote:

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Being a little inquisitive, aren't you, wherorangi?

---

(:

i am pretty nosey as you know

and I usual always start with the basics and work forward from there

Amethyst has the working forward part covered so am hopeful that Squall will end up with a resolution

---

Yep. Seems like you were having to work pretty hard to pry info out.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Squall0000 wrote:

I didn't get the coalesced item

---

Try clearing your cache and logging into a quiet water sim like Pooley.  Let your inventory rebuild.  Don't do anything while that happens.  Don't IM, or walk around etc..

Once your inventory rebuilds, if you still don't see it , try doing a clean reinstall of your viewer as it is possible that something was corrupted.

Finally, if that doesn't work your only option is to file a support ticket if you are a premium member.  If you are not, support for this problem isn't offered.