RL house ...

I was wondering, has anyone built they're RL house/apartment in SL? I just started on mine yesterday. Now I'm curious if anyone else has done the same thing as me.

I started once. I measured and converted feet to meters and the build seemed incredibly small and I gave up the project. I dont think measurement is true when converted. I know my avatar is 8' tall, but my apartment should not have been that small.

My first attempt at building was a replica of my apartment. It came out pretty good. Made me feel right at home

I started a project to build a 1870's victorian home located in a small mountain mining town near where I grew up. Once I got started, though, I realized that replicating a true gingerbread victorian would take about a bazillion prims and a lot of very detailed texturing, so I put it on hold.

What might be more realistic for me, however, would be to convert one of the scores of house plans I've designed over the years. How I wish I had SL back in those days!

I hear you, Paulo.
I've been working on a 1905ish bungalow (got a copy of the old plans), but all the textures and goodies will make it a ghastly prim hog- and that's just the outside!

I tried modeling my own home (basic 1960s tract house) from RL dimensions, but gave up quickly. Any normally scaled house with standard 8' (2.4m) ceilings and reasonably sized rooms (that is, 4m to 6m across, not 10m) will feel extremely cramped in this game. This is true even if you have a relatively petite avatar. It's a downside of the behind-and-above third person camera. It's just a personal bias, but I dislike builds that can only be navigated using mouselook, unless there's a darn good look-and-feel reason for it. I guess I'm just overly enamored of the back of my av's head- a side effect of impending RL baldness, I suppose.

I think that the comparative clumsiness of the avs has led to a an exaggerated sense of in-game personal space, as well. A RL human can maneuver down a 4' wide corridor, thread between narrowly spaced living room furniture, or zigzag across a moderately crowded room with ease. An av attempting the same maneuvers usually ends up looking like a pinball. A RL human can also manage the astounding feat of sitting in a chair with his knees under a table or desk. This task seems to flummox an SL av, resulting in chairs that sit 3' from the table edge. I suppose the old Feng Shui dragon principle (arranging a house such that a Japanese dragon can comfortably thread itself through, without kinking itself or knocking over furniture) needs to be expanded in SL. But designing so that Beanie the Sea Serpent or Nessie can pass just doesn't have the same artistic flair to it.

RL modeling works okay if you're into vast, extravagantly spacious Architectural Digest concept houses, but not so well for more modest/realistic dwellings. Some won't even consider a build unless it has 4m (13.1') vaulted ceilings, at a minimum. Maybe we should all give up on simple houses, and convert to warehouse lofts instead.

Yes remember your avatar is a little over 2 meters. 16 meters in secondlife land is nothing its like the size of a shoe.

I think also that rl people can see more comfortably in relatively smaller places than avs can in SL. You need lots of space above an avs head in SL to not feel like you're in a shoe box.

Yea, I am building it a lil larger than it would be, but it still look's good ... kinda freak's me out tho, walking through my own place in sl lol

So true. My aforementioned bungalow, built to scale is so tiny I need mouselook to be able to see the interior. I'll have to mutate it to be SL friendly. It'll be a Jumbalow




Good idea

Yup, one of my first commercial pre-fabs was my own house (1977 standard suburbs tri-level). Turning the garage into an extension of the living room made it nice & spacious, and I didnt wall in all of the silly things like linen closets & what not either.

The enclosed space thing can be an issue, but suprisingly this is one of my top sellers! And it's even more interesting to see how people decorate your house after they buy it, scary in one instance lol.