https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7253
Not that I'm entirely certain that the Lindens actually read this forum anymore, but even drumming up a few more votes is good. The above Jira is specifically adding height info and a proportions guide to the avatar editor, but I'd say SL seriously needs improved camera placement controls, too.
Lots of practical reasons to provide height information to residents. Most avatars are nearly twice the size they need to be (usually around 7'-8'5" tall, though a large number of people are "short" falling into the 6'5"-7' range), most builds wind up being more than double size to compensate for both 8' tall avatars and the poor default camera placement.
If the average user had a realistically sized avatar then it would free up those who wanted towering 7-9' tall avatars to have them, and actually tower over regular human avatars. (Think wookies, minotaurs, the Frankenstein monster.)
If people started building smaller to suit their smaller avatars, sims would be a lot larger, area-wise (nearly twice as large!), and building smaller means you use fewer prims on the structure (a 10x10m floor only needs one prim, a 20x20m floor needs four prims, now apply that to walls, ceilings, et all and it starts to add up fast when building).
With all the prims freed up from structure work, people could apply those prims to more detail, meaning SL could look a LOT nicer, without any technology leaps.
If Linden Lab is serious about improving content creator tools in the coming year, this should be Priority Number 1. It's essential, and it's easy to fix.
Meerkat Viewer had avatar height added months ago. Emerald Viewer followed a month or two later.
It took me only 15 minutes or so poking at a free camera control script to move the SL camera into an over-the-shoulder position like most video games use these days. Unfortunately using a scripted attachment to move the camera removes some of the usual camera functionality, so fixing it right in the viewer would be a lot more ideal. Still, just moving the position was such an improvement that I wear that attachment constantly, and in sims that aren't wildly out of scale it scarcely feels like I'm in SL at all.
Another thing SL sorely needs is a guide to human proportions, and better tools in the av editor to check our work in that area. Even just being able to check our arm length by having an "Arms at sides" pose we could go to in the editor would be a vast improvement.
It's also impossible to make a nice looking heavily muscled avatar without resorting to prim muscles, and it's debatable that those look good. Muscles, breasts, body fat...slide any of those too far and you get a horrible mess of sharp edged polygons.
Seriously, even though SL has more character mesh customization options than any MMO out there, it often looks like it has the fewest. A lot of that is a lack of tools. Everyone winds up 8' tall, thin, with short, stubby arms. Maybe someone at LL should spend some time with the character creators in Champions, CoH, and others. Many games try to avoid these issues (only one body type, all characters the same height, etcetera) but others attack them head-on and it might do some good for LL to see how they address those problems. Especially if LL ever plans to add an improved set of avatar meshes, these are the sort of things that need to be looked at first.
At SLCC this year several Lindens made a lot of noise about improving content creation and the SL experience. I'd like to think it wasn't just noise, but if all we can expect is mesh models and shiney new effects only a small portion of SL users can see, I believe you'll see that the problems caused by a lack of basic fundamental issues like these will continue to show through no matter how you try to dress them up.
It's like drawing. You can get the best inker, the best colourist in the world, throw in all the shiny Photoshop effects you want, but if the characters are still drawn by Rob Leifeld, people are still going to be laughing at how bad it is 15 years later.