Scale

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Is everything besides you oversized or are you, as the only "object" not matching, undersized?

People 2.4 meters long visiting a place built around avatars like you and me will feel the exact opposite thing, then are they oversized? or is the sim undersized?

Proportions matter, and not a scaling factor or unit. Recently I built a powerplant with parking lot, including a couple of cars and trucks already scaled up 25%. That looked pretty good to me. that was until someone in some insane car drove up, bigger than the truck. I didn't look at the person inside very closely, but even if the avatar was 2.4 meters long, that car was far too big. It made the entire build look freakishly small, or at least the parked cars, the ones that were oversized already.

[Orabelle]

Yes, those problems will continue to be. The way I wrote that might not have gotten my full point across, I'm thinking the finalized project does indeed matter, but during the creation process, you can make it however. That, and it shouldn't matter if it's for personal use, like what I'm working on.

[Coby Foden]

---

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

Is

everything

besides you oversized or are you, as the only "object" not matching, undersized?

People 2.4 meters long visiting a place built around avatars like you and me will feel the exact opposite thing, then are they oversized? or is the sim undersized?

Proportions matter, and not a scaling factor or unit. Recently I built a powerplant with parking lot, including a couple of cars and trucks already scaled up 25%. That looked pretty good to me. that was until someone in some insane car drove up, bigger than the truck. I didn't look at the person inside very closely, but even if the avatar was 2.4 meters long, that car was far too big. It made the entire build look freakishly small, or at least the parked cars, the ones that were oversized already.

---

Finally we can agree about something. Proportions do indeed matter. The unit what SL uses could be called what ever. Even Blurp. One region is exactly 256 x 256 blurps. Ok? Scale, hmm... even you noticed that the car you saw was " far too big" and " the entire build look freakishly small". So there were out of scale compared to each other. Or out of proportions, if you like.

What I really don't understand is that why there is a need to make avatars 2.4 blurps tall? Or even gigantic 2.6 blurps tall? Those avatars need huge houses, many many blurps in all directions. Making free square blurps on the land very few.

Wouldn't it be nice if avatars were more proportionally related to the land measuments 256 x 256 blurps? And more in scale (or in proportion, if you like) to each other?

Let's say for example:

• Male human avatars form 1.7 to 2.0 blurps on average

• Female human avatars from 1.5 to 1.8 blurps on average

Who really would need a human avatar 2.6 blurps tall? For what purpose? To be bigger than the next guy?

There should be a declaration: Anything bigger than 2.0 blurps tall is not a human avatar. Sizes above that are reserved for monster non human avatars.

Just my thoughts... :smileyvery-happy:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I think we agree on a lot of things, but it's quite boring and, more importantly, useless on a forum to constantly agree with eachother.... we have jiras for that, where one can vote on ideas they like. In my opinion the forums are for thinking out loud, exchanging ideas and points of view and throwing some personal preferences into the mix. Nothing scientific, nothing philosophical, that way it would take two days to prepare a post and another one to write it down.

But the problem remains....

You say 1.5 to 1.8 whatevers for a female avatar could/should/would be normal. To Peggy that sounds reasonable. To me that already sounds smallish. For a lot of others it sounds too small. And I don't feel like I'm in any position to tell anyone what size they should be. On making an avatar look well proportioned (by itself, not compared to other things) I think Peggy has a point, it's possible, yet restrictive to make a adult human with human size IF the "blurp" you mention is a RL meter. But LL's point of no return is in distant history. Changing the avatar sliders right now would break an enormous amount of content. You can say what you want about LL, but backwards compatibility is high on the agenda. All arguments on extra available detail and better graphics by building smaller are simply not true as far as I can see. You free up some room, that's true, but at a cost.

I dont see all this as a major issue. I build the way I think is right and so do others. If there's a different approach, so be it. If there's a different scale, so be it. But if people build irresponsibly or say things I don't agree with or things that aren't true, I'd like to comment on that...all for the good of SL.

Not so long ago I was building a sim and I warned the owner about the primlimit. Not because of my builds (pat on my own shoulder), but because of the items built and placed by others. What was the simplest solution for the owner? adding another sim...and later on yet another. That's certainly not my approach, but who am I to judge?

EDIT how could I forget..the forums are here for questions aswell..maybe that's the most important part:)

[Penny Patton]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

 And I don't feel like I'm in any position to tell anyone what size they should be. 

---

 Very few people go around telling others what size they should be. Personally I've encountered more demanding I make my avatar larger but there's certainly some realistically sized avatars harassing taller avatars about their height. I don't think either position is helpful at all.

 My stance is that LL should continue to let everyone be the size they are, but provide properly scaled and proportioned starter avatars to new users, fix the height displayed in the appearance editor to show correct height, and either fix "AgentHeight" or introduce a new scripting element that shows correct avatar height.

 That just seems reasonable to me. It doesn't force anything on anyone (no more so than providing 7' tall starter avatars does, at any rate) and opens up a lot more freedom for avatar creation, as it would greatly diminish the nonsensical social stigma surrounding shorter avatars. This would mean, for the first time in SL history, that it would be possible to create 9' tall avatars that actually look 9' tall instead of "slightly taller than average".

---

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

But LL's point of no return is in distant history. Changing the avatar sliders right now would break an enormous amount of content. You can say what you want about LL, but backwards compatibility is high on the agenda. All arguments on extra available detail and better graphics by building smaller are simply not true as far as I can see. You free up some room, that's true, but at a cost.

---

I'm sorry but this is entirely nonense right here. There was never a "point of no return" because there is no reason to change the appearance editor sliders to resize avatars thus breaking content (though I do think they should change the arm sliders on women, to allow correctly proportioned arms on taller female avatars. Worst case scenario is everyone who currently has properly sized arms (all ten of us) would need to spend a whole 5 seconds adjusting their arms).

 

 See my above suggestions.

 

1) Provide new accounts with properly scaled/proportioned avatars.

2) Fix the height display in the appearance editor to do what it was supposed to do in the first place!

That's it! No broken content!

 

 Also, I'm not sure how you can possibly argue the building benefits of working to scale when you've seen the results yourself.  In that other thread I linked you to three locations, and even provided screenshots, demonstrating what can be done when you utilize scale well.

 

 Actual examples of in-world work speak much louder than any words possibly could.

[Chosen Few]

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Penny Patton wrote:

2) Fix the height display in the appearance editor to do what it was supposed to do in the first place!

---

Believe it or not, it actually does do exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place.  It measures the height of the skeleton (which happens to be the avatar's eye level), and it does so flawlessly.

To people aware of the underlying technology, this makes perfect sense.  The skeleton height is a "real" number, which fundamentally factors into all the equations for everything that has to do with the avatar as a 3D model.  The height of the skin is a product of those equations, not a direct factor in any.  The skin can be morphed in a thousand different ways, as well as deformed by the skeleton itself, whch means its size is arbitrary.

To the general public, this is understandably confusing.  Because it's just called "height", people assume it means the total height of the avatar, as if the avatar had a solid body, like a real human being.  Most people don't have the slightest clue that 90% of what they see outwardly on their avatar isn't "real", just graphical effects. 

Had it been called "eye level" instead of "height", there never would have been any such misunderstanding.

 

The best way to accomplish what you're asking for is to add in a second measurement, to report the product of the equation, right alongside the base factor we already have.  We should be able to see the skeleton height AND the skin height.

But this opens a whole new can of worms.  What gets included in that second measurement?  What gets excluded? Consider the following questions:

 

• If I pump up the hair siders, to give my avatar a giant afro, is it now taller than it was before?  Some would argue no, some would argue yes.  Who's right? 
• What if I attach a big old moose head, with 10-foot-tall antlers?  Does that count toward my total height or not?  Again, some would argue yes, some no.  Who's right?
• If I use an animation override to make my avatar walk on all fours, and make it look like a dog or a cat or something, how tall is it now?  Do we measure height at the shoulder, like we do with quadrapeds in RL, or do we still just consider it to be a bent-over biped?  If it's quadraped, is shoulder height the right measurement, or should it be length from nose to tail?  Whichever of those scenarios is chosen, do we go with bones, or with the avatar's skin, or with the attachments, or what?

No single answer to any of these questions will ever please everyone.  No matter what might be officially decided upon, at least half the population will still say it's wrong, or it's "broken", or what have you.

 

Me, I'm perfectly content with skeleton height.  I understand what it means.  I recognize that most people don't, though.  But hey, that kind of education is what these forums are for, isn't it?

[Penny Patton]

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Chosen Few wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

2) Fix the height display in the appearance editor to do what it was supposed to do in the first place!

---

Believe it or not, it actually does do exactly what it was supposed to do in the first place.  It measures the height of the skeleton (which happens to be the avatar's eye level), and it does so flawlessly.

 

---

 

Nyx Linden would disagree. Apparently the "heightt" shown in the appearance editor is supposed to be your avatar's height, which only makes sense. You do not put something labled "height" in an appearance editor with the intent that it measures something other than height.

 

LL ha acknowledged this is a bug, but like many bugs they have not decided it is worth fixing.

 

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Chosen Few wrote:

But this opens a whole new can of worms.  What gets included in that second measurement?  What gets excluded? Consider the following questions:

---

 

Measuring from the bottom of the avatar's feet to the top of your avatar's skull, (also known as your avatar's height) would be quite enough. I'm even fine with avatar shoe height being included in that (especially as that can be used for more than just shoes). If you go to the doctor's office for a checkup, they generally do not include your hair as a part of your height.

 There's no real way to account for prim attachments, and no way to know if those prim attachments were meant to be included in your avatar's height even if you could measure them with such a feature. (ie: a hat adding to your height would be silly). 

 

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Chosen Few wrote:

Me, I'm perfectly content with skeleton height.  I understand what it means.  I recognize that most people don't, though.  But hey, that kind of education is what these forums are for, isn't it?

---

Only a very small number of SL users come to the forums. Generally it's assumed that when a feature is named or labeled in such a way as "height", it does what the label implies. This issue has caused a lot of unecessary confusion and content creation has suffered for it.

 

 

[Chosen Few]

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Nyx Linden would disagree.

---

I don't pretend to know what conversations you might have had with Nyx.  I do know that the LSL functions to return avatar height in scripted measuring devices were explained eight years ago as returning eye level height, not skull cap height (since the avatar doesn't actually have a skull cap), and have not changed since.  The height values now reported by the viewer are identical to these, are they not?

 

To understand how it works, I encourage you to do the following:

1.  Park your avatar in a static pose to kill all animations that might make the exercise difficult to monitor.

2.  For a reference point, create default cube, flatten it down to a centimeter tall, make it phantom, and position it so it intersects your avatar's head horizontally, exactly at the eye line.

3.  Now play with the avatar appearance sliders, and keep watching those eyes, keeping the cube as a reference for their original position.  Any slider that raises or lowers the eye level, such as body height, head size, leg length, etc., will affect the displayed height.  Conversely, anything that does not change the eye level will not change the displayed height, no matter how much it heightens or shortens the shape of the avatar's skin.  Head stretch alone, for example, can add or subtract as much as 30 centimeters (an entire foot!) to or from the overall apparent height (as measured against a static prim), without changing the displayed height value at all.

From that, we can very easily conclude that only bone positions affect the reported height, and that morphs do not affect it at all.  But wait there's more.

4.  Now grab that prim that is transecting the eye line, and vertically stretch it so its bottom is in line with the lowest point of the avatar's foot.  Check the prim's height.  Assuming you've got its top in dead-center alignment with the eyeballs, and its bottom exactly in line with the foot bone, the prim's height will be precisely identical to the avatar's reported height.

 

That's pretty conclusive evidence of what's going really on.  There's no bug in play in the actual functionality.  The "height" reporting works exactly as it was designed to work. It returns the height of the skeleton, perfectly.

The only mistake is in what it's called.  It should have been called eye level.  The height of the avatar's skin is an entirely different measurement, which is more complicated to calculate, since every single morph has to be accounted for, in addition to the bone positions.

 

If you can offer proof that the above explanation has been incorrect for all these years, and that the above experiment is somehow invalid for any reason at all, I'd love to see it.  I'll always welcome better and more accurate information than any that I already have.  But without such proof, I've got no reason to question the validity of the existing explanation that has been in place for almost a decade, or to doubt the incredibly obvious results of the experiment.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Apparently the "heightt" shown in the appearance editor is supposed to be your avatar's height, which only makes sense.

---

I'm not disputing that.  All I'm doing is pointing out that there's more than one way to define the word "height" in this context.  The definition a lot of people assume applies is not the one that actually does apply.

I'm all in favor of adding the other one, as I said.  We just shouldn't do away with the existing one, because it is useful.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

You do not put something labled "height" in an appearance editor with the intent that it measures something other than height.

---

You also don't put something labeled "path cut" into a slot that should read "profile cut" and vice versa, but that didn't stop them from making that mistake.  The viewer is chock full of badly named fields.  That doesn't change how the math actually works.

In any case, it does NOT "measure something other than height".  The height of the skeleton IS height!  You just would rather have the height of the skin, which also height. 

It's more than understandable why you want the latter.  I agree it would be well worth having.   It's just a little silly, though, to insist that the skeleton height is not also a height.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

LL ha acknowledged this is a bug, but like many bugs they have not decided it is worth fixing.

---

Got any documentation on that?

In the absence of any hard evidence to the contrary, I have to say I very much doubt that anyone would define it as a bug in how the actual measurement mathematics are done.  If measuring eye level is the goal, it works as designed.  If the word "bug" simply must be used, then the best we can really say is that it was a bug on the human end, in the process of naming the field.

If you want to know the total height of the avatar's skin, from heel to crown, that's fine.  But, if my understanding of how it works is accurate, then returning that value would require accessing a different set of information than what the current measurement system actually looks at.  That's the work I'd assume they feel is not worth doing, if indeed that is their stance on the subject.

That said, once again, if you do have any hard evidence that proves eye level is not the actual measurement, I'd love to see it.

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Measuring from the bottom of the avatar's feet to the top of your avatar's skull, (also known as your avatar's height) would be quite enough.

---

Quite enough?  So, of all possible definitions of what height could mean, the one you happen to prefer is the only one that matters?

I get that it happens to be the definition YOU want, so from your point of view, it no doubt seems like the only proper way to go. But once again, I have to point out that while your assessment isn't necessarily wrong, it is incomplete.

From a 3D artist standpoint, there are all kinds of things that we can define as any character's "height".  3D simulations are not reality.  An avatar is not a human being.  Simulations play by their own unique rules, most of which have nothing to do with RL, and only some of which bear a passing resemblance to it.

This insistence upon trying to make make every measurement conform to how things are done in RL is so limiting. 

Your snarky comment in the parentheses is a little insulting of your own intelligence, in this regard.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

If you go to the doctor's office for a checkup, they generally do not include your hair as a part of your height.

---

I'm human.  My avatar is a 3D model.  One of these things is not like the other.

 

If you really want to get into it, a doctor measures your RL height, by determining the point at which a level straight edge collides with the top of your head.  To do the same thing in SL, would be to measure the avatar's collision mesh, which just like the skeleton, is not at all the same thing as its visually displayed skin. 

The apex of the avatar's collision mesh can be above or below the visual top of the head, again depending on the morphs applied to the skin.  The height of the collision mesh is yet another definition of "height" within the 3D simulation, which is no less valid, and no less important, than any other.

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

There's no real way to account for prim attachments, and no way to know if those prim attachments were meant to be included in your avatar's height even if you could measure them with such a feature. (ie: a hat adding to your height would be silly).

---

So how do we draw the line between what constitutes a hat, and what constitutes a head?  If only the stock head is of value, that alienates the furry community.  If only the stock body is of value, that alienates everyone who replaces that body with a rigged mesh, or even with pain old fashioned prim attachments.

This is a philosophical question as much as it is a technical one.  You can take whichever side of the philosophical debate you like, but to imply that your side is the only side that matters is not right.

 

Ideally, I'd rather see an array of height values, but if we simply must narrow it to one single value, then the reason I'm OK with it being skeleton height (although I know it's far from a complete solution) is that the skeleton is the only thing directly and solely controlled by the height sliders.  Everything else is additive to that, after the fact. 

Technically, the avatar's included skin is as much an attachment as any other object.  The fact that the attaching was done before we as users got there, and that we lack the power to detach it ourselves, doesn't change that in any way.  Every character model consists of a skeleton and an attached skin (or several attached skins).  The avatar is no different than any other.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Only a very small number of SL users come to the forums.

---

Sure.  But that doesn't make what we do here any less important or far-reaching.  Much of what is now common knowledge in SL began right here.  The forums are one of the few major roots of SL's informational grapevine.

For better or worse, LL's really not in the documentation business.  They've never been good at it, and likely never will be.  More often than not, it falls on us here to get the ball rolling.

 

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

This issue has caused a lot of unecessary confusion and content creation has suffered for it.

---

Agreed.  But simply complaining about it doesn't clear up the confusion, nor does demanding it be "fixed" when it's not actually broken.  It should simply be renamed, and another value for skin height should be made available.

In the mean time, we should take every opportunity to explain how it actually works, just as we do with everything else.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Penny Patton wrote:

This would mean, for the first time in SL history, that it would be possible to create 9' tall avatars that actually look 9' tall instead of "slightly taller than average".

---

It would also mean it's no longer possible to make short avatars. As soon as an avatar as small as you is considered normal, what will be considered small? I am not as small as you an my avatar has a height of 30. That makes me  1,72 meters (measured by prim) in SL while the average height of a  RL female is about 1,60. I didn't try very hard, but with my current shape it means dragging the height slider to 4.

So if you ask me, you are doing the same thing all the people with tall avatars are doing, which is reducing a good part of the possibilities. The only way to overcome this is making the average avatar 50 tall. That way you can go up as much as you can go down. The height won't be 1,60 m, with my current shape that translates in 1,98 meters

 

---

I'm sorry but this is entirely nonense right here. There was never a "point of no return" because there is no reason to change the appearance editor sliders to resize avatars thus breaking content (though I do think they should change the arm sliders on women, to allow correctly proportioned arms on taller female avatars. Worst case scenario is everyone

---

See the above. If 1,60 or 1,65m is the average, that has to be at an avatar height of 50 or you have the same issues you describe, only at the other end.

 

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1) Provide new accounts with properly scaled/proportioned avatars.

2) Fix the height display in the appearance editor to do what it was supposed to do in the first place!

---

1) I somewhat agree. But I wouldn't use the "meter" as a measuring stick. I'd like to see characters in a range of 40-60 in avatar height for the default avatars.

2) Chosen has replied more elaborately than I ever would..nothing to add at this point. I would be repeating you both.

 

---

Also, I'm not sure how you can possibly argue the building benefits of working to scale when you've seen the results yourself.  

In that other thread

I linked you to three locations, and even provided screenshots, demonstrating what can be done when you utilize scale well.

---

And as I replied, it doesn't show anything besides it being a nice build which happens to be "to scale". (A thing that doesn't work in 50% of content in the first place). It does not prove building to scale results in something better than anything else.

Let's say you built twice as small as someone else would. That indeed saves you 75% of the tiers if you decide to use a quarter sim. That would mean you only have a quarter of the prims to work with, so in that case I really don't see your claimed gain in detail, on the contrary. On top of this only using a quarter sim to do the same build and assuming your 3 neighbours do the same, you'd be living on four connected homesteads really since you'd have to share a single CPU and its memory between four "sims". That won't exactly result in better graphics as you somehow seem to claim.

If you build twice as small and decide to keep the entire land, you gain a lot of room, agreed, but I don't see how you get more detail, apart from saving a handful of prims because you don't need that second and third 64 meter prim to make your floor. That can be overcome by using megaprims anyway, about any size you can imagine has been made, up to sizes well over a sim. The extra room you have would be empty though, unless you free up some prims by lowering the detail on the original build.

 

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 Actual examples of in-world work speak much louder than any words possibly could.

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I don't see how the volume makes any difference when what's said is besides the point. See the first paragraph of the above and my earlier reply in the other thread.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Chosen Few wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Nyx Linden would disagree.

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I don't pretend to know what conversations you might have had with Nyx.  I do know that the LSL functions to return avatar height in scripted measuring devices were explained eight years ago as returning eye level height, not skull cap height (since the avatar doesn't actually have a skull cap), and have not changed since.  The height values now reported by the viewer are identical to these, are they not?

 

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Nobody is doubting whether or not the agent height function returns the skeleton height, the question is should that number be used as the avatar height and displayed in the avatar shape editor.

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The height of the avatar's skin is an entirely different measurement, which is more complicated to calculate, since every single morph has to be accounted for, in addition to the bone positions.

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 Not that hard at all, just measure the distance between a vertex at the top of the head from a vertex at the bottom of the feet. The only hard part is agreeing on which vertices to use, as you pointed out, should hair count as part of an avatar's height.

 

 

[Chosen Few]

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leliel Mirihi wrote:

Nobody is doubting whether or not the

agent

height function returns the

skeleton

height, the question is should that number be used as the

avatar

height and displayed in the

avatar

shape editor.

---

Actually, people do seem to be doubting that, which is what I'm trying to help with here.   It's been refered to it as "broken", in need of "fixing", and as "a bug", rather than as what it actually is, a wholely different function than the one some would prefer it to be.  Even the wiki gets it wrong, not only by omitting any mention of eye level or skeleton height, but also by suggesting that the difference between reported agentSize and actual apparent height is a fixed amount, which it's not.  All signs are that that the common understanding of this topic is about as far off the mark as it gets.

I'm in full agreement that just referring to it as "avatar height", and leaving it at that, is a BIG problem.  That's the whole reason we are in this unfortunate predicament in the first place. 

As I've said quite a few times now, if it were called "eye level", instead of "height", there would be no confusion.  It still wouldn't solve the problem of people neededing to know precisely how tall their avatar appears to be, of course, but at least people would right away understand what it really means.

 

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leliel Mirihi wrote:

Not that hard at all, just measure the distance between a vertex at the top of the head from a vertex at the bottom of the feet. The only hard part is agreeing on which vertices to use, as you pointed out, should hair count as part of an avatar's height.

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I'm not sure it's that simple.  Is there any single vertex on the avatar's head that is always the highest point, no matter what the configuration of the morphs?  I don't know that there is.  I also don't know for certain that there is any particular vertex on the foot that is always the lowest point.

In order to get an accurate measurement, the system needs to be capable of examining the entire mesh.  That's not exactly hard to do, of course, but it is a very different thing from measuring the skeleton, which is why you can't just take the existing measurement system, and say "fix it".   That's the wrong tree to bark up.  To get the right anwer, you have to ask the right question.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Chosen Few wrote:

I'm not sure it's that simple.  Is there any single vertex on the avatar's head that is always the highest point, no matter what the configuration of the morphs?  I don't know that there is.  I also don't know for certain that there is any particular vertex on the foot that is always the lowest point.

---

There's a vertex at the top of the skull that's always the highest point, I don't know if the hair mesh has a similar vertex but I don't think it should be counted. For the feet you could use the vertex at the back of the heel, it's always the lowest point for bare feet and is what the shoe base extends. Some of the morphs can make it so they aren't the only vertices at the highest or lowest point, but that doesn't really matter.

The only problem with measuring like this is that it's viewer side, the sim doesn't "see" the avatar mesh so it wouldn't be so easy to add an avatar height function to LSL.

[Cerise Sorbet]

The viewer height formula does use the bones as a rough guide, but it does not return an accurate representation of the skeleton's size. It does not use the eyes as a reference in any way, that is folklore not supported in the actual code. The real trouble is a "assume a spherical cow" kind of formula that doesn't measure what it was intended to measure. It is true that a simple addition, albeit imperfect, gives the most consistent approximation of the real size using the available data.

[Penny Patton]

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Chosen Few wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Nyx Linden would disagree.

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I don't pretend to know what conversations you might have had with Nyx.  I do know that the LSL functions to return avatar height in scripted measuring devices were explained eight years ago as returning eye level height, not skull cap height (since the avatar doesn't actually have a skull cap), and have not changed since.  The height values now reported by the viewer are identical to these, are they not?

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Here's Nyx's comment on AgentHeight from the Jira;

 

Nyx Linden added a comment - 04/Jun/10 9:12 AM

We use the function we use to tell the sim what your avatar's height is. If this measurement is off, then we're giving the sim the wrong numbers, and that function needs to be updated. If a fudge factor needs to be computed, then we need to fix how we compute mBodySize, not add a fudge factor to how we display it.

 

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Chosen Few wrote:

I'm not disputing that.  All I'm doing is pointing out that there's more than one way to define the word "height" in this context.  The definition a lot of people assume applies is not the one that actually does apply.

I'm all in favor of adding the other one, as I said.  We just shouldn't do away with the existing one, because it is useful.

---

I'm saying fix the "height" as displayed in the appearance editor, that is undeniably supposed to report your avatar's height (bottom of the feet to top of the skull), it is useless, or worse than useless, displaying anything else.

Any other "definitions" of height need not apply in this context.

I'm not saying it isn't useful to have script calls that pull the bounding box (or whatever exctly it is AgentHeight looks at) exactly, just that it shouldn't be in the "Appearance" editor labled as "height".

[Penny Patton]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

This would mean, for the first time in SL history, that it would be possible to create 9' tall avatars that actually look 9' tall instead of "slightly taller than average".

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It would also mean it's no longer possible to make short avatars. 

...

See the above. If 1,60 or 1,65m is the average, that has to be at an avatar height of 50 or you have the same issues you describe, only at the other end.

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You are absolutely incorrect on this assumption. Understandably so because the appearance editor is not designed in an intuitive fashion. For instance, there are multiple sliders that affect avatar height, making your suggestion that "50 on the appearance slider should be x height" utterly impossible. Here is an article explaining how the appearance editor works, which might clear things up for you.

The short version is that avatars can be anywhere from a minimum of 4'01" to a maximum of 8'10" tall. Currently, LL starts new users at 6'8" to 7'1" with the human starter avatars. Combined with misreported height and years of no height data in the appearance editor at all, avatars are most commonly between 6'8" and 8' tall, tho it's far more common to see 8-8'10" avatars than it is to see avatars under 5'10". Due to a combination of social stigma it's very rare to see avatars under 6' tall, even more rare to see avatars under 5'10".

 Getting rid of the height/scale confusion and encouraging more realistically sized defaults for human avatars would go far to eliminate that problem. 

 The hard truth of the matter is we'd see far more variety in avatar sizes, from short to tall.

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

And as I replied, it doesn't show anything besides it being a nice build which happens to be "to scale". (A thing that doesn't work in 50% of content in the first place). It does not prove building to scale results in something better than anything else.

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 And I'm telling you that the builds I showed you are not possible otherwise. That "handful of prims" you save adds up FAST and the amount of space it creates for you to work with would require you to spend far more money to get around otherwise.

(Not disputing that this effect was greater under the 10m limit on prim sizes, of course, but as a builder I still regularly hit the 64m size limit when working on quarter or full sim builds.)

 You can build equally gorgeous sims, sure, but you wind up with far less to do in them, unless you spend the money to add additional sims.

[Chosen Few]

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Penny Patton wrote:

Here's Nyx's comment on AgentHeight

from the Jira

;

 

Nyx Linden

 added a comment - 

04/Jun/10 9:12 AM

We use the function we use to tell the sim what your avatar's height is. If this measurement is off, then we're giving the sim the wrong numbers, and that function needs to be updated. If a fudge factor needs to be computed, then we need to fix how we compute mBodySize, not add a fudge factor to how we display it.

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Thanks for following up with the quote from Nyx.  I woud take his use of the word "if" to indicate he didn't want to commit to saying anything definitive quite yet, at the time he wrote that.  It sounds more like he was planning on exploring it, to see exactly what indeed is going on.

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

I'm saying fix the "height"

as displayed in the appearance edito

r, that is undeniably supposed to report your avatar's height (bottom of the feet to top of the skull), it is useless, or worse than useless, displaying anything else

Any other "definitions" of height need not apply in this context.

I'm not saying it isn't useful to have script calls that pull the bounding box (or whatever exctly it is AgentHeight looks at) exactly, just that it shouldn't be in the "Appearance" editor labled as "height".

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Sounds like we're in agreement, then, that a different function should be added, to return the height of the mesh, rather than just using llAgentSize.

I do not agree, however, that also displaying eye level, and possibly other height values, right along side it, would be useless.  But if it has to be one or the other, I do agree that the new function would be the one to go with.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Penny Patton wrote:

You are absolutely incorrect on this assumption. Understandably so because the appearance editor is not designed in an intuitive fashion. For instance, there are multiple sliders that affect avatar height, making your suggestion that "50 on the appearance slider should be x height" utterly impossible. 

Here is an article explaining how the appearance editor works, which might clear things up for you.

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That's why I specifically said "with my shape" and "didn't try hard" and intentionally said 1,60 AND 1,65 meter. I am well aware of the fact not only body height determines the avatars overall length.

 

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The short version is that avatars can be anywhere from a minimum of 4'01" to a maximum of 8'10" tall. Currently, LL starts new users at 6'8" to 7'1" with the human starter avatars.

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So that means your 9 foot avatar can't be made anyway (just kidding on that one)

So according to those two figures the average size is 6'5.5" or 1,97 meters. That is 1 cm less than the number I gave earlier, less than half an inch.

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Due to a combination of social stigma it's very rare to see avatars under 6' tall, even more rare to see avatars under 5'10".

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If that's the case I don't think changing any numbers or scales or words or values (apart from the non technical ones) will make even the slightest of differences, we'd need a psychologist.

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And I'm telling you that the builds I showed you are not possible otherwise. That "handful of prims" you save adds up FAST and the amount of space it creates for you to work with would require you to spend far more money to get around otherwise.

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And I'm telling you that other builds that look fabulous are not possible that way. I've built plenty of sims and I have used the occasional megaprim here or there, sometimes quite a lot even, but I have never had to waste prims because they were too small. Not after the "new megaprims" arrived, which is already years ago. Yes it takes up less space, I don't deny that, so you could do with a smaller plot that costs less, but you stubbornly deny there's a flipside to that and not a mild one either.

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You can build equally gorgeous sims, sure, but you wind up with far less to do in them, unless you spend the money to add additional sims.

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No you can build superior looking sims, because you have more prims at hand as soon as you use more land.

 

 

[Chosen Few]

Thanks, Cerise.  I'm afraid I'm not qualified to read through all that code, though.  Programming has never exactly been my thing.

I see it grabbing the bone positions and scales in the beginning, and I see it doing some multiplications thereof, to try to arrive at a body size.  After that, my head starts to hurt, and I have to look away.  I may be good at a lot of things, but I just don't seem to be wired for this particular thing.

 

Let me ask you this.  If it's merely folklore that, after all else is said and done, the skeleton height (eye level) is what actually gets returned, then why do experiments like the one I outlined in my previous post seem to yield such consistent results?  I can go eye-to-heel with a cube on a hundred different avatars, and I'll get a hundred results that appear to match the displayed height, to within a few decimal places (and I've always chalked those decimals up to simple human error, since I can't actually snap the top and bottom of the cube directly to the bones).  If it's really starts out 'clumsy and random as a blaster' in the beginning, how does it circle back to create such a consistent illusion of precision in the end?

[Penny Patton]

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Chosen Few wrote:

I do not agree, however, that also displaying eye level, and possibly other height values, right along side it, would be useless.  If it has to be one or the other, I do agree that the new function would be the one to go with.

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That's why I specifically said displaying it AND calling it "height" is what's harmful.

Although, I would argue that for simplicity and usability sake only actual height should be displayed in the appearance editor, with separate options for those who want to seek out more information. Tools like the appearance editor should be as simple and intuitive as possible, while still providing a lot of creative freedom.

[Chosen Few]

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Penny Patton wrote:

That's why I specifically said displaying it AND calling it "height" is what's harmful.

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Sounds like we were misinterpreting each other's wording, then.  I'm glad we've now got it sorted.

 

 

As for the appearance editor being simple and intuitive, I'm sure you'd agree there are bigger fish to fry than the height display, before any of us could ever accuse the thing of having either of those properties.  Viewer 3 has come a long way toward finally implementing a great UI.  But the appearance editor remains confusing as all hell.  So many windows to open and close, so many drop-downs.  Its just a giant mess.  I was glad to see a lot of the Viewer 1 UI go the way of the dinosaur, but its appearance editor was vastly better than what we've got now (not that it was exactly good).

That said, yes, if it's called "height", it should BE height.  It sounds like we were both trying to say that all along, just in different ways that were confusing each other.

[Penny Patton]

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Chosen Few wrote:

Sounds like we were misinterpreting each other's wording, then.  I'm glad we've now got it sorted.

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I agree!

 

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Chosen Few wrote:

As for the appearance editor being simple and intuitive, I'm sure you'd agree there are bigger fish to fry than the height display, before any of us could ever accuse the thing of having either of those properties.

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I agree again! However I'd say that fixing the height is a very simple matter, every single TPV (that I'm familiar with at least) already does this with LL's viewer being the holdout showing incorrect information.

Sorting out the whole appearance editor would be a major endeavour, one that would be best left to introducing an all new avatar mesh (which can be done while keeping te current av mesh as an option avoiding the issue of breaking legacy content).

 So, by all means, let's get an improved appearance editor, but if it's going to be such a major project we might as well fix the easy stuff, first!

[Penny Patton]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

 but you stubbornly deny there's a flipside to that and not a mild one either.

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And I will continue to deny it, because I'm right. I'll continue to back up my words in the only way that matters, by building larger, more detailed sims that people will continue to mistake for being done with more land than they are.

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

No you can build superior looking sims, because you have more prims at hand as soon as you use more land.

 

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 Yes, the more land you have the more prims you have at your disposal. No argument there. However, if two people have the same amount of land available, the person who builds to scale will be able to create an environment that is larger and more detailed than the person who insists on building to double scale.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Penny Patton wrote:

And I will continue to deny it, because I'm right. I'll continue to back up my words in the only way that matters, by building larger, more detailed sims that people will continue to mistake for being done with more land than they are.

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I don't have to build anything to prove that copying one prim once results into two prims. I don't have to build anything to prove staircases 90 cm wide don't work, not even with your altered camera position. I don't have to build a normal living room fully furnished to prove you will have a terrible time trying to move around. If you don't take my word for it, you can build it yourself.

Simple fact is if you use only a quarter of the sim, you will have 3 neighbours chipping away at the resources, why would I need to build a sim to make that clear? It's as obvious as the copied prim I mentioned.

Simple fact is if you have more prims available you can build with more detail. I don't have to build that and make a picture, because it is so obvious.

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Yes, the more land you have the more prims you have at your disposal. No argument there. However, if two people have the same amount of land available, the person who builds to scale will be able to create an environment that is larger and more detailed than the person who insists on building to double scale.

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Larger and less detailed. How difficult is that to understand? Even if you have to quadruple the amount of prims by building twice as large, which is ofcourse the biggest nonsense ever, but possible, you would have the exact same detail.

[Penny Patton]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

Larger and less detailed. How difficult is that to understand? Even if you have to quadruple the amount of prims by building twice as large, which is ofcourse the biggest nonsense ever, but possible, you would have the exact same detail.

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 I've provided examples, actual builds in Second Life, proving my point as well as a detailed article explaining why it works. I've yet to see a single example to the contrary.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

So I guess you'd be satisfied if I built a two prim window, then build a 2 prim window with two bottles in the sill to show the second one has more detail? (edit) Oh wait, 6 bottles...ehhh

You've provided half examples. Now if you would take those builds, double them in size and use four times the land and then be short on prims for whatever near impossible reason, then you've proven something. Now you haven't proven a thing.