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Coby Foden wrote:

However the slogan "Your World - Your Imagination" should not be interpreted as "Your World - Your Random Whatever Inconsistent Scale". <-- (Here I'm referring to items in regard to human avatars and things for them.)

Right, SL is not a copy of RL. Nevertheless what SL lacks now is consistent scale. One designer uses whatever random scale which they think would look good. Other designer uses their random scale what they think looks ok. So, the end result is that SL is filled with randomly scaled things. This is not a good thing as I already mentioned earlier. 

That's a good point, Coby. I've never been a shopper, so I've no idea what sort of scales are out there. If there is the sort of variety that you say, then people should only shop in stores where they can actually get on the furniture to see how it looks with their avs.

Very short  adult avs look embarrassingly ridiculous on my furniture, but averagely sized avs look fine. I've met a great many avs through the years, I rarely feel to be big with them, and I haven't altered my height at all. So I do know that my height is suitable to use when making funiture for the avergae av, which is the way I've always done it. In more recent years, I've made some smaller furniture than I did earlier on. I sell both, and the earlier stuff still sells well - and that's with people trying before buying.

Furniture makers have to come up with a balance. On the one hand, rooms are larger than RL rooms, so, to look right in the rooms, furniture also needs to be larger than RL furniture. On the other hand, furniture doesn't need to be so large that it's only any good for 'big' avs to use. I'm sure that creators come to different conclusions when trying to get a balance between the two, but people can try furniture before buying, so some variety in scale shouldn't be a problem.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Just out of interest, how close to the back of your head is your camera? It's the distance behind that makes RL-size rooms too small.

The Debug Variables are:

CameraOffsetRearView: default is 3m behind and 0.75m above

thats the default follower camera

CameraOffsetScale: default 1

higher values zoom out, lower values zoom in

CameraPositionSmoothing: default 1

higher values make the camera follow your movements slower or smoother lower values make it follow faster

CameraAngle: default 1.047

the zoom lens of the camera, view angle

You can play around with it. But a camera that gives an overview needs some distance. It's all in the viewer and everyone can set it up btw. so i don't see why Lindens have something to do with it besides setting the default years ago. If people don't like it, they can change it.

Everyone can set exactly what they want and people telling that they have the only real setting - well I'm not compatible to missionarys - I have my own fav :)

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It's your camera position that I was interested in. I really wanted to know if you've set it much nearer your head than the default and if you can actually use RL-sized rooms, say 12' x 12', because of changing it. It wouldn't affect anything in the discussion but I was curious.

I've had my camera a little closer for quite some time. I couldn't use a 12' x 12' room though :)

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Phil Deakins wrote:


Coby Foden wrote:

I have kept my camera location, now for over one year, in a lot lower location than the viewer default is.

Just out of interest, how close to the back of your head is your camera? It's the distance behind that makes RL-size rooms too small.

The default for CameraOffsetRearView in the viewers are:

x = -3.000

y = 0.000

z = 0.750

For me, I generally use:

x = -3.700

y = 0.000

z = 0.100

So the camera is much lower than the viewer default. For general use I keep the X = -3.700 because I want to perv my whole avatar in view when walking, lol :smileytongue: My avatar is 1.803 metres, (5.915 feet) as measured by prim.

In small places I lower the X value, even to X = -2.000 which works great in realistically sized houses. If I used even smaller avatar, like 1.6 metres, I could easily use even closer X value without feeling that I'm eating the avatar hair.

So as the camera is adjustable I really don't see the need to build up to 1.25 or 1.5 times bigger. When the avatar is very tall, close camera does not work well as the big avatar begins to block the view. Big avatar needs the camera to be further away (but not that high anyway as the viewer default is). With smaller avatar, the camera can be closer (if one wants to keep it close, not perving the whole avatar..). It's as simple as that.

I went to 1920s Berlin sim which is built to realistic RL scale.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/1920s%20Berlin/55/59/26

I used CameraOffsetRearView settings:

x = -2.000

y = -0.100

z = 0.000

I had no difficulties in roaming around there with my 1.803 tall avatar in the small rooms. Worked perfectly. With even smaller avatar (like 1.6 metres) it will work great.

There are other camera settings to play with too, as Nova told in her post.

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Ian Undercroft wrote:

 

I find Phil's line of reasoning compelling.

I'd challenge anyone to recreate in SL their RL own home and furniture to exact scale and then to try and navigate around that home. Unless you happen in RL to live in a very sparsely furnished mansion, it would be as good as impossible no matter what your camera angle!

SL rooms have to be larger than in RL in order to enable navigation and viewing through a trailing camera. Furniture has to be larger than in RL so that those rooms don't then look empty. 

 

 

 

I once built my RL bedroom to scale in SL (I wanted to plan how to move all the furniture around), and even for my relatively small av, it was like driving a bulldozer through a broom cupboard. I've since moved to a better camera position, but I'm sure it wouldn't be much easier.

I don't agree that furniture has to be larger to fil that space. Most RL rooms in modern houses *are* small and cluttered, unless you live in some kind of mansion or minimalist designer space. In the larger RL spaces I've seen, people don't tend to add more and more furniture, they just spread out. Or, what I've seen quite often, they cluster furniture in 'islands' relatively close together, with avenues of space around them. And that's more or less how I build a room in SL with scale furniture.

Even with smaller (i.e. around RL human height) avs and better camera angles, I agree that rooms in SL need to be larger than RL to be comfortably navigated; but not as large as is necessary with the current set-up.

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Oh, I found some older SL snapshots from my disk. Here's one appropriate to this thread. :smileysurprised: :smileytongue:

Snapshot_017.jpg

Surely those tall avatars need bigger houses and furniture than the smaller, real life scaled ones do.
Big ones need big items.
Smaller ones are happy with smaller items.

 

PS.
Please note how realistic humans the smaller ones look. Adults with good proportions. The tall ones are from some alien planet with strange proportions. :smileyindifferent: (Ah, no offence to the tall ones if somebody recognizes them as their own avatar...)

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Phil Deakins wrote:

ETA: One more thing. In the SL world there are all sorts of animals that move around on 2 feet and talk, there are martians (hi Perrie), there are humans, there are all sorts of beings, not to mention all sorts of objects that don't exist in the real world. The SL world is not a copy of the RL world, so why try to think of it as a copy? It doesn't make sense to me.


Why reinvent the meter when there's a perfectly good one that's already defined as matching the real world?  I'm sorry, but you're completely alone on this.

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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Phil Deakins wrote:

ETA: One more thing. In the SL world there are all sorts of animals that move around on 2 feet and talk, there are martians (hi Perrie), there are humans, there are all sorts of beings, not to mention all sorts of objects that don't exist in the real world. The SL world is not a copy of the RL world, so why try to think of it as a copy? It doesn't make sense to me.


Why reinvent the meter when there's a perfectly good one that's already defined as matching the real world?  I'm sorry, but you're completely alone on this.

Alone? I don't think so lol

There's no need to reinvent the metre. Just think of the SL world as not being a copy of the RL world, and things in it are, by nature, bigger than in the RL world. Like on another world (which it is, of course) Simples ;)

I find it very interesting that you have chosen not to explain how you would allow an avatar, with the default camera position, to see and navigate reasonably well in an RL-sized fully furnished living room. It seems that all you have to say in your posts is that I am wrong, and stuff like that, instead of actually contributing to the discussion and general understanding.

I'll tell you what. I'll make it even easier for you. Please explain how an avatar, with a camera position of your choosing, can see and navigate reasonably well in a typical RL-sized fully furnished living room of 12' x 12'. I already made it easier for you by saying that you can use a 4m x 4m fully furnished living room, which is approximately 1' bigger each way, so that still stands.

I know you can't do it, but, since you disagree with my thinking, you really should try.

It really should be with the default camera position, because that's the norm for people in the SL world, and we design things for the norm, but try it with your own camera position.

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I was going to ask whether the big ones are too big or the small are too small; i.e. which are the most realistic heights? :)


Coby Foden wrote:

PS.

Please note how realistic humans the smaller ones look. Adults with good proportions. The tall ones are from some alien planet with strange proportions. :smileyindifferent: (Ah, no offence to the tall ones if somebody recognizes them as their own avatar...)

I'm not saying this just for the sake of it, but the tall girl on the left looks quite realistically proportioned - chunky thighs but that's not really unrealistic. The tall girl in red needs to work on her shape quite a bit though. The girl on the right looks good shape-wise, but the short guy also needs to adjust his shape. So, for me, the girl on the left (tall) and the girl on the right (short) both look very good shape-wise, and are the two most realistic ones.

If you put a typically sized chair in the shot, then their relative heights would become obvious, but if each were alone in the shot, they would all look quite normal heights.

Btw. Is the girl on the right you?

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I was going to ask whether the big ones are too big or the small are too small; i.e. which are the most realistic heights?
:)
Coby Foden wrote:

PS.

Please note how realistic humans the smaller ones look. Adults with good proportions. The tall ones are from some alien planet with strange proportions. :smileyindifferent: (Ah, no offence to the tall ones if somebody recognizes them as their own avatar...)

I'm not saying this just for the sake of it, but the tall girl on the left looks quite realistically proportioned - chunky thighs but that's not really unrealistic. The tall girl in red needs to work on her shape quite a bit though. The girl on the right looks good shape-wise, but the short guy also needs to adjust his shape. So, for me, the girl on the left (tall) and the girl on the right (short) both look very good shape-wise, and are the two most realistic ones.

If you put a typically sized chair in the shot, then their relative heights would become obvious, but if each were alone in the shot, they would all look quite normal heights.

Btw. Is the girl on the right you?

Well-proportioned? Really? She's more than ten heads tall, where the accepted ratio among artists is 7.5 to 8 heads tall. Her legs are too long, and her arms are exceptionally short (arm-span considerably shorter than her height. And that's even allowing a bit for the heels she appears to be wearing.

The woman in red is even further from human proportions - enormously long legs and a tiny head. The other two avs are much better proportioned; I'd say the woman in the silks might be the better of the two. The guy's proportions are pretty good, but maybe a bit too tall for the size of his head. He's close to the catwalk model ideal in relative proportions. It's hard to judge actual heights, but I'm guessing the woman in red is close to the SL maximum and the guy is around 6' tall.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

If you put a typically sized chair in the shot, then their relative heights would become obvious, but if each were alone in the shot, they would all look quite normal heights.

Well, the shortest woman (yes, that's me) is 1.70 metres tall. The guy, my friend, is about 1.75 metres tall. Once a long time ago we wanted to experiment how the small avatars would look and work in SL environment. It happened that we were on a teasing joking mood. So we placed ourselves beside many of the very tall ones and snapped lots of photos.  :matte-motes-evil: :smileytongue: :smileylol:

After experimenting, to our great surprise, we found that the small avatars function really well in SL. Especially so when things are made to the realistic scale too.

As the scale of things in SL is what it is, we made a compromise in our heights. Now I use most often 1.80 metres tall shape and my friend's shape is around 1.87 metres. I have never since felt the need to use any taller avatar. These sizes don't look like midgets among the giants. The oversized furniture often seen, still looks grossly oversized though. But small avatar hops easily on those. :smileywink:

 

PS.

Phil, you cannot be serious in saying that the woman on the left "looks quite realistically proportioned". Look at her extremely long legs! You can easily see the faults in her proportions if you put a photo of RL woman beside her and compare them. Seeing lots of disproprotioned human avatar shapes in SL tends to blind the eyes from seeing the truth, what is right and what is wrong. One must rest one's eyes on RL photos to teach them what is a good shape.

 

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I thought it might be (the one on the right, you). *Very* nice.


Coby Foden wrote:

After experimenting, to our great surprise, we found that the small avatars function really well in SL. Especially so when things are made to the realistic scale too. 

Yesterday, I did a little experiment - the one that I've asked that naysayer twice about but he's reluctant to do it - for obvious reasons. I made a hollow box 4x4m, with an opening to represent a door, and 4m high with no ceiling. I shortened my av to 0 (zero) and measured it at 1.86m, which is about 6'1". I could probably have made it shorter by adjusting the legs and such but 6'1" is a realistic real world height for a male. I also scrolled my camera in as fas it would go before it went into mouselook, otherwise it would have stayed outside the room and I wouldn't have been able to see anything inside, so I just had my head on the screen. I went inside the 'room' and there was no way in the world that it could be furnished and used as a room in any remotely normal way whatsoever.

4x4m is approximately 13' x 13', which is probably a little larger than the average RL living room and bedroom. So it's simply not possible to make buildings in SL the same size as buildings in RL and use them reasonably well. The rooms don't just have to be a little larger - they have to be a lot larger, and we know what that means :) Even doubling the length of the walls (4x the floor space) wouldn't work well enough. Real world mansions with huge rooms would work if recreated 1:1 but not ordinary buildings.

The only sensible options, imo, are 1) assume that the SL metre is different to the RL metre (after all, it's only a word), or 2) assume that things in the SL world are naturally bigger than their counterparts in the real world. Either of those makes everything in SL work together just fine. The idea that SL sizes should mirror RL sizes 1 to 1 simply cannot work.


Coby Foden wrote:

PS.

Phil, you cannot be serious in saying that the woman on the left "looks quite realistically proportioned". Look at her extremely long legs! You can easily see the faults in her proportions if you put a photo of RL woman beside her and compare them. Seeing lots of disproprotioned human avatar shapes in SL tends to blind the eyes from seeing the truth, what is right and what is wrong. One must rest one's eyes on RL photos to teach them what is a good shape. 

On closer inspection, you are perfectly correct. My first impression was that the tall girl on the left look fine (apart from the chunky thighs). However, the guy (your friend) did need to adjust his shape somewhat at that time. My immediate impression was that his hips were too low, or his midriff was too long, or his legs were too short, making his waist too low. Of course, he could be just a guy with short legs :)

An aside. A common fault with proportions that I've found over the years is the arms being much too short. I made my animations for arms of an average length (judged by my own RL arms), but I saw people trying them out, and they'd have a hand inside the tummy of the other av, instead of somewhere else. A number of times I've got people to stand in RL, hang their arms and hands limply by their sides, notice where the tips of their fingers come to on their thighs, and then see where their av's fingertips come to. Often, the av's fingertips are up by their hips. And I'm told that even some Library shapes are like that.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

An aside. A common fault with proportions that I've found over the years is the arms being much too short.

....

Often, the av's fingertips are up by their hips. And I'm told that even some Library shapes are like that.


Indeed, that is one of the very common mistakes in avatars. One problem with tall female shapes is that it is impossible to make long enough arms for them because the slider value reaches its maximum before the arms are long enough. In male shape this problem does not exist. Short female avies can adjust the arm length to be long enough. But tall female avies are in trouble. The arms will be too short. Which looks very bad.

I often think to myself seeing short armed avatar "that avatar needs a helping hand in toilet to clean herself because she cannot reach where she should.."

:matte-motes-big-grin-squint: lol

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As soon as I started building I realised that my avatar didn't match the prim measurements.

I've been sort of obsessed with getting proportions right ever since.

Realism, authenticity, that sort of thing is my cup of tea.

I enjoy building something on a 1:1 scale, like the Brandenburg Tor in our sim, I can put my rl scaled avatar next to it and make a snapshot that I can put next to a RL photo of me by the same tor and its alike.

I can go in mouselook and walk around it and be amazed at its size.

Or build a building that no longer excists and feel like I'm looking at the real thing, not a copy of it made for giants.

Anyway, enough about motives.

My avatar is about 6ft tall, just like my RL me.

If I could I'd put all my measurements into the avatar editor or even do a full body scan so the avatar in SL is exactly like RL me.

Anyway, I think someone already mentioned it, we have a free avatar kit that helps you figure out how to make your avatar more realistically scaled, I think we also have one those new measurement devices that counts your size according to prim scale, not the old SL one with bounding box included, etc.

Snapshot_002.JPG

You can give the new avatar a test drive by walking around 1920s Berlin that is almost entirely build to RL scale.

But you don't HAVE to, tall avatars are welcome too although you may bump your head a few times.

Our sim is also very handy to check your camera settings because we have some of the smallest apartments I've seen in SL.

You can rent a 2 by 3 meter damp hotel room with a 3 meter high ceiling in a smelly dirty neighbourhood with people fighting, dogs barking, babies crying, etc.

Isn't history romantic ;)

 

And here are some of my adventures visiting an average sized sim, yes that is a 6ft tall avatar;

scale2.jpg

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Jo Yardley wrote:

And here are some of my adventures visiting an average sized sim, yes that is a 6ft tall avatar;

scale2.jpg


This picture clearly shows how hugely oversized a lot of SL interiors are. :smileysurprised:

Big oversized avatars need big oversized builds. Small realistically sized avatars can happily live and move about in smaller spaces. With small avatars one can keep the camera lower and closer to the avatar, thus making it easy to move in smaller spaces than with big avatars.

Jo, thank you for the excellent example photo. :smileyhappy:

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Coby Foden wrote:

This picture clearly shows how hugely oversized a lot of SL interiors are. :smileysurprised:

Big oversized avatars need big oversized builds. Small realistically sized avatars can happily live and move about in smaller spaces. With small avatars one can keep the camera lower and closer to the avatar, thus making it easy to move in smaller spaces than with big avatars.

But that's just not true, Coby - not true at all. Have you actually tried to navigate in a furnished rl-sized living room or bedroom? No matter how short you make your avatar, and no matter how you position your viewing organ (camera), you simply can't do it.

Jo said that you can rent a 2x3m hotel room, but it can't be used as a normal living space room; i.e. as a 2x3m real world room could be used. Earlier I said that I'd tried with a 4x4m room (box), which is reasonably typical of a real world living room or bedroom, and I know you can't do anything it. It's just not possible to navigate in buildings and rooms that are rl-sized, no matter what you do with your av and its camera.

With the best will in the world, trying to force real world sizes on buildings, furniture and avatars, in a world that can't do it, is a nonsense. Jo's Berlin may be rl-sized but it can only ever be a novelty in SL. It can't be a blueprint for normal life and navigation in the SL world. The silly thing about trying to do it (and failing, of course) is that it is totally unnecessary, because the sizes of things in the SL world work perfectly well in the SL world - just as the sizes of things in the real world work perfectly well there.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

But that's just not true, Coby - not true at all. Have you actually tried to navigate in a furnished rl-sized living room or bedroom? No matter how short you make your avatar, and no matter how you position your viewing organ (camera), you simply can't do it.

I have navigated in small cramped spaces succesfully. Sure it's not very comfortable (like not in real life either). But it is doable, you can do it. It is true, and it is a fact.

My point was that small avatars need less space than big avatars do to feel comfortable. Surely you can agree with this fact, don't you? It shouldn't be too difficult to understand this fact.

When the avatar is realistically sized, you don't need to build hugely oversized house, and you don't need oversized furniture to fill the house.

[Edit, added this:]

If in real life we have the luxury of having spacious rooms, we don't go shopping trying to find oversized furniture to the rooms so that they would "look right", do we? We just enjoy the extra free space.

:smileyhappy:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

But that's just not true, Coby - not true at all. Have you actually tried to navigate in a furnished rl-sized living room or bedroom? No matter how short you make your avatar, and no matter how you position your viewing organ (camera), you simply can't do it.

Apparently you don't have the skills to pay the bills, then.  Hardest time I have with an 8'3" tall bear is ducking doorways, not battling the camera.

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Jo. I'd like to see it for myself. Especially, I would like to see it done in a 12' x 12' fully furnished living room or bedroom; i.e. in a typical real world home, because I found it to be impossible in one slightly larger than that (4x4m).

I just went over to the Berlin Project to see for myself, and the rooms there are big enough to navigate around. I'm sure they are real world sizes too, but they are all naturally big because they are shops, an arcade and a railway station. I wanted to find an rl-sized house, with a furnished living room or bedroom, but I couldn't find one.

No doubt it can be done in apartments with very large floorspaces, but that's not typical of the real world, and it's certainly not typical of what SL users want. They want houses and such. Also, it can't be done in your 3x2m hotel rooms that you rent out. If you say differently, I would sure like to see it in action.

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Coby Foden wrote:


Phil Deakins wrote:

But that's just not true, Coby - not true at all. Have you actually tried to navigate in a furnished rl-sized living room or bedroom? No matter how short you make your avatar, and no matter how you position your viewing organ (camera), you simply can't do it.

I have navigated in small cramped spaces succesfully. Sure it's not very comfortable (like not in real life either). But it is doable, you can do it. It is true, and it is a fact.

My point was that
small avatars need less space than big avatars do
to feel comfortable. Surely you can agree with this fact, don't you? It shouldn't be too difficult to understand this fact.

When the avatar is realistically sized, you don't need to build hugely oversized house, and you don't need oversized furniture to fill the house.

[Edit, added this:]

If in real life we have the luxury of having spacious rooms, we don't go shopping trying to find oversized furniture to the rooms so that they would "look right", do we? We just enjoy the extra free space.

:smileyhappy:

Have you tried navigating in a 12' x 12' furnished room, or a 4m x 4m one, Coby? You can stumble around inside it, over furniture, etc., of course you can, but that's not even remotely acceptable. I did it without furniture yesterday, after setting myself to 6'1",. which is realistic in the real world, and it's a totally impossible way to live in SL. You said youself that what you did was "uncomfortable" so I'm sure you see it as a silly way to try and have things.

But you do have to build hugely oversized houses when avatars are adjusted to RL heights. I set myself to 6'1" and, with my camera as close as possible (just before it went into mouselook), I moved around inside a 4x4m room. I could move but i couldn't even see the floor, so I couldn't see where to put my feet. I tried to picture it as a bedroom with just a bed and a dressing table in it. I simply wouldn't have been able to navigate round the bed and dressing table if they were there. I could have stumbled over them, yes, but that's no good. I imagined it being 8x8m and it would still have felt too small for my 6'1" with my seeing organ behind and unable to look slightly down. It would have been a bit better - and much larger than the typical RL bedroom room. So even 4x the floor area wouldn't be large enough.

It's not just that the seeing organ if behind the head (however close you get it, it's still behind), it's also that it doesn't point down or forward at will, like our RL eyes and head do. In RL, when we want to see the floor so that we can navigate around something, we look there, but we can't do that in SL. I honestly see no good reason at all to try and make SL things the same sizes as their RL counterparts, and I see multiple strong reasons why not to do it.

If we have large rooms in RL, which most people don't, then I think we do try to fill the wall space suitably. We don't squeeze stuff together, of course, but we don't like great lengths of 'empty' wall. I don't anyway.

I'd really like to see a typical RL-sized furnished living space, and try it out at 6'1" with my 'eye' as close to my head as I can get it without going into mouselook. I still say it's impossible to navigate inside it reasonably well, and I invite anyone to prove me wrong - seriously. I'll even shorten my legs if necessary.

Note: It wouldn't make any difference to buildings and furniture sizes, because we have to create for the 'norm', but I'd still like someone to show me somewhere where it does work reasonably well, so that I can see for myself.

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You visited our teleport area, to visit Berlin you need to go trough the station and get on the train.

All our apartments have been rented (the sim has been pretty much fully booked for the last 3 years) so you can't really walk about those without our police tapping you on your shoulder or a tenant hitting you over the head with a frying pan or something ;)

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