Penny Patton

A part of the problem is the way LL encourages people to push the largest extreme in avatar sizes with the basic avatar mesh. It's rare to see a guy in SL under 7' tall. Most are somewhere between 7' and 9' tall. To put that in perspective, the Na'vi from Avatar were 9'-10' tall. Chinese sculptors next to a pair of 9 and 10' tall Na'vi sculptures. It's not uncommon to see SL avatars about as tall as the 9' sculpture on the left. This skewed sense of scale in SL effectively shrinks "giant size" avatars for exceedingly clunky hacks to create the appearance of being "giant".

I've always been pretty good at keeping primcounts down, so I had a list of things ready for replacing the moment 64m prims arrived. I've probably saved around 200 or more prims on the quarter sim floating island I've been working on, just by making larger prims where I previously could not use the more limited "megaprims" we've been stuck with all these years. And I'm one of the very few people who build to scale in SL, which had already saved me tonnes of prims in my work. Those who build larger will be able to save a lot more thanks to the new extended prim sizes. I haven't noticed much of an affect on rez time or lag. I doubt we'll see much as people will immediately make use of all those prims they're saving, so the reduced prim and polygon counts won't last.

There's no rule against shorter avatars, in fact there's a growing trend towards more realistically sized avatars because it's more practical in SL. Land is a static size, so making your avatar larger effectively makes sims smaller. Also until the past week or two prims were limited to 10m to a side. Which means environments built with huge avatars in mind waste an obscene amount of prims. There's still a 64m limit on prim sizes so large scale builds (like role-playing sims) can still waste prims being unecessarily scaled up. Also, LL built in some odd restrictions on women's proportions making it impossible to have long enough arms when you're much taller than 6'. Still, there's a lot of dim witted people out there with a kneejerk reaction against avatars smaller than their own. You'll get comments, and you may even get ejected from poorly run sims, but this attitude is dwindling due, in part, to the reasons above and explanations about SL's height issues becoming more readily availavble. Actually, there's a growing number of sims that encourage more realistically sized human avatars. 1920's Berlin aims for an immersive and accurate representation of, as the name implies, Berlin in the 1920's. The Wastelands is a post-apocalyptic role-play and residential area where more of the public builds are starting to be done to scale. Doomed Ship is a sci-fi horror sim that is a fantastic example of how large and detailed a single sim can appear to be when built closer to realistic scale. The Island of Milk & Cream is a mature cowgirl themed island and club.It was recently mistaken for a full sim build by New World Notes even tho the island is only 1/4th of a sim.

Kylie Jaxxon wrote: Thanks, Penny, that makes sense. Since I'm not a content creator and don't know the ins & outs of that kind of thing, wasn't sure if they work with the same type of tools/sliders that we do, but yes, knowledge would be a key thing. Hee, no problem. Linden Lab really does not make getting a good looking avatar easy. Between the lack of good, well made base shapes for people to start from (the base shapes LL provides are atrociously bad, like the person who made them never saw an actual human body) and the lack of proper guides in the appearance editor LL has made it so you pretty much need to go to art school then take a class on the quirks, bugs and inconsistencies of their own appearance editor to have the knowledge of anatomy it takes to make a good shape. It really shouldn't be so difficult. It could easily be extremely simple for anyone of any skill level to create a good looking shape. I'm honestly not sure the management at LL understands how this kills their ability to market SL more successfully.

Dana Hickman wrote: and the height slider allows AV's to be shorter than that minimal thickness dictates. That results in midget or troll arms/lower legs, as well as hips with the thighs pushed too far up into them. Also ,this isn't entirely true. You run into issues with the torso and height of the hips when going for extreme shortness before you run into minimal thickness issues. The "troll/midget" look more often comes from two things. First, people tend to lack an understanding of what it takes to scale a shape down so they wind up squashing their shape, rather than consistently scaling it down in all dimensions. There's more to it than simply the body thickness sliders, too. Multiple sliders affect things like thickness and height, most people are unaware of that which causes problems. Second, SL creates a very scewed ideal of human shape which would make Cosmopolitan look downright homely. SL avatars tend to be stretched like they were put through Willy Wonka's taffy machine. This is so prevailent that even properly proportioned human shapes tend to look "squashed" in comparison.

Kylie Jaxxon wrote: Dana, is this also true when you purchase a shape that is marketed as petite/short...the proportions are still off? That can only be answered on a case by case basis. The problem is, most shapes you see in SL, from those provided by Linden Lab, to most of those sold by other residents, are made by people without a strong grasp of proportion or a good understanding of the appearance editor, so regardless of size they're often badly proportioned. It's impossible to tell whether a shape is properly proportioned unless the creator provides demos for you to try before purchasing or the vendor art they display is made to show off how well proportioned the shape is.

Dana Hickman wrote: Pussycat Catnap wrote: The taller you are the more impossible it becomes to have proper proportions. It would help if you include the whole truth, not just part of it. The farther away your AV is from starting default height in ANY direction, the more impossible it becomes to have proper proportions. What I believe Pussycat is referring to is that odd skewing LL gave the women's arm length slider. At around 6' tall or so it actually becomes impossible to have arms long enough for your body because LL made women's arms substantially shorter than those on men. This issue is made worse by LL starting out new users with female avatars 6'3" and taller and the tendency towards larger avatars among most SL users. Women can maintain correct adult human proportions down until at least 4'11" tall (probably as short as 4'8"), and up to about 6'1" or so. Men have a wider range because LL gave them the ability to have longer arms, so it's not as difficult for them to maintain correct arm proportions with larger avatars (they have shorter legs than women, tho not so much that it becomes an issue). Contrary to what most people believe, the sliders do not represent an even or consistent distortion from the default models LL started with. Nor are the starter avatars LL provides representative of the default size and shape of the original models. You can find a more thorough write-up about the appearance editor and its quirks as a part of my article "A Matter of Proportion". Really, there's a lot of ridiculous issues surrounding the starter avatars, the mesh, the appearance editor and the whole topic of avatar sizes in SL. None of these issues should exist and it's just embarassing trying to explain them to new users or people who don't already use SL.

Ceera Murakami wrote: V3 still lacks a text entry field in the text chat floater, which they eliminated in V2 for no reason whatsoever. IM's can enter text in a field at the bottom edge of the floater, like Text chat's floater used to be able to do. But Text chat is forced to use the text entry field that is welded irrevocably to the bottom edge of the screen. That one flaw alone is the main reason I use Firestorm, because Firestorm fixed that problem. The funny part about this is that a lot of the initial TPVs were created specifically, in part, because LL tacked on a second chat bar to the chat history floater "for no good reason". People hated the Communicate changes, to this day I believe Cool Viewer uses the old pre-Communicate UI without the text entry welded to the chat history. If anything, this goes to show that you can't please everyone. People want the ability to customize the UI to their liking.

I want a viewer that lets me decide what does in the sidebar and what remains a resizable floater. There are several things I actually like to have in the sidebar. My "picks" in a quickly accessable tab (though LL seriously needs to get rid of the "profile" tab from that, it's literally a blank box with a "Profile" button that opens your profile in a floater. Better yet, get riud of the profile tab altogether and move the "Picks" sub tab into the Place sidebar. There's room for another tab there! Speaking of, I like the Places sidebar, the Outfits sidebar, the People sidebar. I'm also fine with the appearance editor being tucked into the sidebar. I'd get rid of the Home tab and the Inventory tab in a heartbeat if I could. Inventory needs to be in a floater, it's just so frustrating trying to navigate it when most of the things I'm looking for are tucked so deep in folders or have such long names with version numbers at the end that I can't see anything without horizontally scrolling back and forth constantly. I use ctrl+alt+i to bring up a floating inventory window but it would be nice to save screen space by getting rid of the tab altogether or moving it to a toolbar button that brings up the floater. The "Home" tab in the sidebar is just a waste of space. Never found a use for it. I also much prefere the overall look of Viewer 2 and Viewer 3. The cleaner, nicer looking UI textures and graphics. 1.x looked like software from the 90's. Still, on the whole, for all the complaints people have, Viewr 2 and Viewer 3 are only a marginable change from 1.x. For every valid complaint there's a dozen people just adverse to any change, even tho there are some valid complaints there's also a lot of improvements (like much better menu organization, no more searching under every single menu to find something that was slapped in there for God only knows what reason). LL really could stand a much more drastic UI change. If done well it could be the greatest improvement to SL yet. The SL viewers past and present more resemble document editors than virtual world interfaces.

This maybe isn't helpful, but it's definitely topical and awesome. ^^ http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/Moustaches/

Dollquet wrote: I am a newbie and yet I found out something really quick. That small avi's are automatically considered a child avitar The trend over the past few years has been towards smaller avatars, not for realism's sake so much as that since avatars can be any size from about 4' tall to 9' tall yet land is static in size, the larger your avatar is the smaller the land around you is. For landowners this means the larger your avatar, the less land you're getting for the money you pay out in tier. There's a growing number of sims that encourage or even require realistically sized avatars. 1920's Berlin, a faithful recreation of the time and place its named for. The Island of Milk & Cream, a mature hangout featuring ushimimi/cowgirls as one of the primary themes. Doomed Ship, a sci-fi/horror role-playing sim. The Wastelands, a post-apocalyptic future world. @Ariel Vuissent There's certainly no problem with being larger than life, you're quite right it's a virtual world and everyone should be able to enjoy their fantasy appearance. The problem is that Linden Lab starts people off with extremely oversized (and poorly proportioned) avatars. The size of the average SL starter avatar tends to range from 6'3"/191cm to 7'1"/216cm! Up until Viewer 2.1 Linden Lab also provided nothing in the appearance editor to tell people their height. Unfortunately, the height added in Viewer 2.1 was broken on release, showing a height that is actually about 6 inches (15cm) shorter than your avatar's actual height, which only adds to the confusion. These things are problems because, in addition to the land issue, it's like you say. People should be able to be the size they want. These problems force the majority of SL users into larger shapes, without their knowledge or consent. This creates problems like the fact that no one in SL can be a "giant" compared to the average avatar without using hacks and kludges to get around the fact that SL residents who think they're 6' tall are actually 8' tall. Someone who wants to be an 8' tall Imperial Space Marine won't be any taller than your average SL guy. A 9' tall minotaur or Na'vi will only be a head or two taller than the "Average Joe" in SL. This is limiting to their creativity and freedom to enjoy the fantasy look they choose. Above is a Sixth Sense Denotaur next to a human avatar scaled up to the common 8' size you see many men at. Below is that same Denotaur next to a 6' tall human spaceman. Which image makes the Denotaur a larger, more imposing sight? Then you get the social problems like the OP, Dollquet, ran into. Being harassed due to a problem LL created and continues to foster. On top of that, it's incredibly difficult to create a good looking shape from scratch, which is exactly what you need to do to scale down. The appearance editor lacks a lot of basic guides and tools in addition to the incorrect height it displays. I give away a realistically sized man and woman shape for free for those who want a little help. I also provide directions on how to improve SL's camera placement in an article I wrote explaining how the SL camera works. This aids a lot in exploring "built to scale" places like Berlin. Just scroll down until you see screenshots of SL control panels.

That's why I mentioned themed clubs, adult or not. People have the right to set the theme for their land no matter what it is and enforce it as they see fit. There's plenty of justifiable reasons to do this that don't include any malicious persecution. I personally participate in a lot of sims where my usual cow-girl self really doesn't fit in. So I change my avatar to fit the theme or use an alt specifically for that RP sim. I support the reasons for these sim rules even tho it prevents me from being "myself".

You definitely have to be clear about the type of sim it is. I'd not only have no problem with RP sims having certain appearance requirements, but I'd expect and in many places encourage it. I don't want to go role-play in the Space Opera universe of Frank Herbert's Dune and find most of the players there are cartoon animal people. I don't want to go to a Star Fox themed role-playing sim and find most of the people there are 8' tall human space marines with maxed out muscle sliders and guns larger than an Arwing strapped to their back. Theme is important to RP sims. Outside of RP sims, and themed clubs, then it's just weird. Why would you want to exclude anyone from shopping at your store just because of the avatar they wear?

There's a lot LL could, and should, do, but it's going to be a painful process no matter what. It's not just an issue of land owners (though land could easily have script resource limits in the same way it currently has prim limits), there's also the resources every single avatar takes up. A regular, bare avatar with no scripts or attachments eats up sim bandwidth and processing power as the sim has to communicate to every single person in the sim, as well as anyone in neighboring sims close enough to see into that sim, what is going on. That's how we all see when another avatar moves, plays an animation, rezzes an object, etcetera. So right from the get go, sims can only support so many people and all sims on a single server are affected when one sim is crowded. On top of that, the more polygon heavy an avatar's attachments are, the more difficult it is for your computer to render. Meaning lower framerates for everyone that sees them. This is why a lot of major gathering events require people to remove attachments. It gets worse! Every avatar's scripts contribute to lag once the sim's script memory is used up aznd the server has to resort to swapping information off of a hard drive instead of RAM. There are curently no limits to the amount of script memory a single avatar can use. Bad attachment makers shove items like hair and shoes full of re-size/re-colour and re-texture scripts, turning avatars into massive lag bombs. Making avatars less laggy would involve prying the poorly scripted attachments people have piled up in their inventories for years, spending countless linden dollars on them. Something most people would not be very happy about, especially as content creators by and large are STILL not providing low lag alternatives. Which is crazy considering you could take pretty much any given avatar, using 20-50MB script memory, retain all their scripted features (the ones the person actually uses, at any rate), and bring them in under 2MB script memory EASY. That's including any RP, combat or multi-tool HUDs they might be constantly using.

It all depends on the script, it sounds like you're using a script that requires a notecard for some reason, possibly to list animations or maybe for the sit target coordinates. Do you know where you got this script? Did the script come with the first chair? This doesn't happen to be the 1l chairs from Burned rice, does it? If that's it you need to copy the contents of the first chair's notecard and append it to the contents of the second chair's notecard.

The comments under the Ridley Scott video are depressing, people arguing about whether it's anti-democrat or anti-republican not realizing both parties played a big part in the out of control deficit. The second video itself is even worse, instead of simply conveying the message that we need to take control of the national budget, it slips some awful misinformation into the mix along with a dose of xenophobia. The budget issue can't get solved so long as the public buys into the "us versus them" rhetoric of Democrats and Republicans.

Victoria wrote: Penny Patton wrote: I'd correct the size and proportions of the human starter avatars .. You'd be better off introducing NEW starter avatars, because if you did what you said, you'd be changing the avatars a lot of people are using already, and they might not like that. That's not how it works. When a new user recieves one of the starter avatars, either upon creating an account in Second Life, or by getting one from the Linden Library, they recieve a copy of that avatar. Any changes made to the starters in the Library or given to new accounts would not affect those who already have copies in their own inventories.

I have two human avatar shapes I would like to donate to the Linden Library. Who should I approach about that?

There's way too much to fix all in one day, but I'd probably see to it that the incorrect height displayed in LL's official viewers was fixed, I'd correct the size and proportions of the human starter avatars and I'd probably talk to Rodvik about LL's dire need for a creative lead. Not for creating content but for managing the face SL presents to the world via the new user experience, welcome areas and other Linden builds, overseeing creation of starter avatars to prevent design problems, providing internal feedback to the software devs on SL's design tools as well as someone who can talk to resident designers and speak the same language, as well as someone who can oversee defaults for graphic presets like camera placement and the default sky settings.

I'm posting my windlight sky files along wity the day cycle file for those who have a current SL viewer with the new windlight controls. You can grab a zip file with everything here. Instructions for installing the files here.

Lindal Kidd wrote: Really, the avatar mesh is not detailed enough to reliably duplicate a Real Life person's appearance. You are much better off making an avatar that looks good, rather than obsessing over making it look real. I have to agree with this. Photorealistic skins tend to fall hopelessly into "uncanny valley". You're better off with a somewhat stylized representation of yourself than trying to maker it "photo-real".

If you find yourself in the position of needing to make your own shape, this guide might help. I started a thread on it a few posts down from this one. http://pennycow.blogspot.com/2011/08/matter-of-proportion.html

Heh, it's not really just about scaling down avatars so much as a broader look at design in Second Life and providing some useful tutorials. I'd love to see intentionally large avatars actually able to tower over the average human at 7-9' tall. I'd also like to see shorter avatars. Ever notice SL seems to have a lot of elves, but no dwarves? It's pretty obvious that the Lindens didn't consider Second Life a "creativity tool" back when they first opened the grid up to the public. Under their new CEO, Rod Humble/Rodvik Linden, this seems to be their focus, I'm just pointing out some of the past missteps they'll need to work around and address to get there, while showing that in doing so they can make SL a lot easier and more fun for the average resident and that they can do all this while increasing our creative freedom at the same time. Still, in retrospect, I think my guess of 11 years old being the youngest you could manage is a bit generous. Considering the torso issues you might not be able to manage below a teenager. (That is, while keeping to average height for the age.) I haven't tried to make a child shape myself.

A Matter of Proportion - How better understanding of human proportion and the Second Life appearance editor can help users create better avatars. "A Matter of Proportion" is the third in a series of guides to better understanding content creation in Second Life. This article focuses on avatar shape creation including a brief introduction to human proportions, an introduction to the quirks and inconsistencies of the appearance editor and finally an illustrated step by step guide to creating a shape while achieving your desired body type, build and appearance. I'd fully intended to rewrite the entire article here as a forum post but I kept running into odd errors with the forum software so I'm just linking to the existing blog post. If you find this article helpful you may also enjoy the previous entries in the series. "A Matter of Scale" is an in-depth look at how scale (how larger or small things are) in Second Life affects everything from your avatar appearance options to how much land you get for your money. "A Matter of Perspective" takes a look at the camera position in Second Life and the unintended affects of it's default placement. The article includes illustrated instructions on how you could improve your own camera placement.

I'm not sure, but this might be a "Basic Mode" issue. "Basic Mode" locks you out of a lot of basic features, which seems counterproductive to me. Confusing, too, for new users when they go through the orientation and Help Island areas and see all these instructions that Basic Mode locks you entirely out of. I agree with the idea behind Basic Mode, just the execution seems poorly thought out. Of course, again, I'm not sure this is the issue at all, but try changing to "Advanced" mode at the login screen the next time and see if the right click options appear when you've logged in.