setting realistic avatar heights

I found by clicking on a box in various SL stores gave me my avatar height. It said my avatar is 6 ft 7 in tall. But everyone goes by the heights of the default avatars which are around 6 ft 3 in. I think those heights are not realistic, or not by what these click-on boxes say. Many custom avatars go by the scale of maximum units of 100 in the appearance editing mode. So then I made my own estimation that 100 units equals 6.5 ft or 6 ft 6 in which is the maximum height more or less that humans will reach. From this I can calculate the number of units my avatar will be. Since I'm about 5 ft 6 in tall I calculate 5.5/6.5 = .85 rounded off, I set my avatar's height at 85 units. I feel these proportions are more correct in comparison to the giant 6.5 ft avatars.

A lot of these height things are wrong... they say you are shorter than you are. The best way to measure is to put a phantom box over you and raise it to your height... then see how tall the box is.

I have one avi that looks short, but it is 5'11"

I think the reason most avatars in SL are so big is because:
* the rooms of buildings need to be larger due to make your camera work better
* the furniture has to be made larger so it doesn't appear too small in the now-larger rooms
* avis need to be larger so they don't look like little kids on the furniture

This has been discussed in detail here:

Making a Proper Shape - A Guide to Human Proportions:
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