Size Matters

[Kelli May]

You appear to be missing the point. I don't see anyone insisting that eveyone look "exactly like RL" apart from those creating strawmen to knock down.

Providing people with the tools to create beautifully proportioned avatars is not restricting their imagination. It does not force them to play a copy of their RL self. It does not stop them from playing a neko, a glamour model, a robot, the opposite gender, or a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue if it takes their fancy.

And finally, for everyone who continues to trot out "SL is not RL" and variations of the same: Thank you for your staggering insight, Captain Obvious. It's neither original nor relevant to the discussion. If the best excuse you can provide for a badly-proportioned avatar is "It doesn't have to be like RL" then you really need to go back and rethink your argument.

[Bobbie Faulds]

We aren't talking about curves/boobs etc so much as we are about what was pictured with the super tall and then normal size avis. The default camera setting has you looking from so far back and so far up that you look like you're shorter than you are, until you move your cameral down and really look. My avi, per the SL equivalents, is about 6 feet tall. She barely comes up to many avi's chests.

[Kelli May]

I've no argument with your comments on camera settings. In fact I made exactly the same point on the first page of this thread when I listed "A default camera position that doesn't make the avatar look smaller than it is" as one of the things that 'new SL' would need to improve avatar scaling.

My later reply and the focus of my particular rant was CadenzaInVivace, who *was* talking about physiques and proportions.

At around 5'6" in SL I'm well aware of the height 'problem'.

[LlewLlwyd]

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Bobbie Faulds wrote:

We aren't talking about curves/boobs etc so much as we are about what was pictured with the super tall and then normal size avis. The default camera setting has you looking from so far back and so far up that you look like you're shorter than you are, until you move your cameral down and really look. My avi, per the SL equivalents, is about 6 feet tall. She barely comes up to many avi's chests.

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IN real life I went out once with a girl who was short in comparison with me. We weren't compatible.

***I think it had something to do with me using the top of her head to rest my beer glass***

[BilliJo Aldrin]

My avatar height registers anywhere from 5 ' 7 to 6 ' 2,  but today at a nude beach a 9 ft tall female moderator came up to me and said they don't allow child avatars there. I said "hey i'm 6 ft tall and  i don't look like a kid". She just said oh and left me alone.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

My avatar height registers anywhere from 5 ' 7 to 6 ' 2,  but today at a nude beach a 9 ft tall female moderator came up to me and said they don't allow child avatars there. I said "hey i'm 6 ft tall and  i don't look like a kid". She just said oh and left me alone.

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I am truely amazed by the "Amazon" mentality in SL at some locales. It seems to usually be most apparent in newer account holders.

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote

They can just adjust the default camera position. 

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 They can if they know how. The controls aren't exactly easy to find or figure out.

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CadenzaInVivace wrote:

Why do people insist on looking exactly like RL?

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Exactly like RL is an exaggeration but it's still a good question. It's mainly because of something called suspension of disbelief. Here's the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

I think most people in SL come there for immersion. They don't want to just watch it from a distance, they want to feel like they're a part of it. And that means they need some "hooks", some ways to connect to it.

This does not go against the fantasy element btw, quite the contrary. Take a look at ... say a Star Wars film. Try to see how the creators deliberately use "hooks" to drag the audience into the story and how those hooks don't weaken the fantasy aspect, they strengthen it.

[LlewLlwyd]

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ChinRey wrote:

Take a look at ... say a Star Wars film. Try to see how the creators deliberately use "hooks" to drag the audience into the story and how those hooks don't weaken the fantasy aspect, they strengthen it.

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YEP! Every time a new Star Wars movie is released there are Wookies queuing down the street to watch it.

***The Lanniks, like Yoda, just sneak in around the back***

[ChinRey]

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LlewLlwyd wrote

YEP!

Every time a new Star Wars movie is released there are Wookies queuing down the street to watch it.

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You see them too? People don't believe me when I tell them!

[irihapeti]

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ChinRey wrote:

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LlewLlwyd wrote

YEP!

Every time a new Star Wars movie is released there are Wookies queuing down the street to watch it.

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You see them too? People don't believe me when I tell them!

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jejejeje (:

[Pamela Galli]

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ChinRey wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote

They can just adjust the default camera position. 

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 They can if they know how. The controls aren't exactly easy to find or figure out.

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Yes, the advantage in any life is always to those who make the effort to keep themselves well informed.  But the "they" I intended was LL.

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote

Yes, the advantage in any life is always to those who make the effort to keep themselves well informed.  But the "they" I intended was LL.

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Aha. Take a look at this JIRA:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-27576

It's been given "Major" priority by LL and is celebrating its fifth birthday later this month.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

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Bree Giffen wrote:

What do you think will be needed in the new SL that would keep avatar sizes in the normal range and what would be needed so that homes, furniture, etc also be kept in check? 

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Well, your SL inventory, i guess. But, you know, the Yahoo exilant in charge (Mr. Altberg.a.k.a. "Ebbe Linden") made perfectly clear that SL inventories will not be available on the "new platform" (which obviously has nothing much in common with Second Life).

And because your SL inventory and the inventories of about a half million active SL users will not be available on the "new platform", something like (SL related) "normal size" will be obsolete - due a lack of relativity.

But you have a chance to be a normal size setting pioneer! Why?  Because a half million active SL users will not trash their inventories for jumping naked, depraved, noobish, without skills, communities and whatever else SL makes Sl onto the "new platform"!! As a result you might be all alone, setting your very own standards of "normal size". And wait for a few years until SL finally bites the dust - THEN everyone will be forced to eat your opinioon on what "normal size" is!

YES!

[Vivienne Schell]

Bobbie Faulds wrote:

The biggest reason there are the height and size issues is the camera position.

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Not really. The biggest problem is that almost no one in SL uses  mouselook, which is the only truly RL like and most "natural" way to look at the world (Real and Virtual). As long as (whatever) camera position is a subjective matter, there simply cannot be any kind of "normal" size.

[Bobbie Faulds]

The following is my camera setting and I love it.

Go into debug settings.

 

CameraOffsetRearView
X: -3
Y: 0
Z: 0.1

FocusOffsetRearView
X: 0.125
Y: 0.775
Z: 0.200

That gives me this view.... http://gyazo.com/0ed9ea13e5c5346d61df7aa2bc3b605c

 

[Vivienne Schell]

Nice!

But if you want the "normal" scale (which you, i suppose , base on your subjective RL experience), go and get a RL. Debating RL norms and scale in an environment which is not based on anything but purely subjective perception is absolutely clueless.

[ChinRey]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

But if you want the "normal" scale (which you, i suppose , base on your subjective RL experience), go and get a RL.

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Well said! You should go out in RL and tell everybody!

Tell it to the crippled guy stuck to a bed and only able to walk and run and move about in SL.

Tell it to the retired lady tucked away in a small room because nobody has any use for her anymore.

Tell it to the woman who is "playing around" with MamaAllpa and prim babies because she can't have children i RL

Tell it to the girl who's been so throughly abused as a child she simply can't funvtion in RL anymore

Tell it to the man stuck in a desolate big city slum and comes here to catch a glimpse of imitations of grass and trees and sea

and tell it to...

aww, I better stop there.

You know, I've been rather agitated on this forum before but this is actually the first time I've been angry.

 

[Coby Foden]

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ChinRey wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote

Yes, the advantage in any life is always to those who make the effort to keep themselves well informed.  But the "they" I intended was LL.

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Aha. Take a look at this JIRA:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-27576

It's been given "Major" priority by LL and is celebrating its fifth birthday later this month.

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They might be afraid that if fixed "it could break existing content". The very tall grasshopper leg, pin head, too short arms, etc. avatars will finally see that there is something seriously wrong with their shape. Existing content broken! Aarrghh...

Thus they don't fix it.  :smileysad:  :smileywink: