Looking for Accurate metric to american feet and inches

The measuring system in Second does not seem accurate. I am trying to recreate my real life apartment in game. I am calculating from american feet and inches to metric and inputing the dimensions into the in game objects. For example I put in a door that is 80 by 30 inches but I when my 6' avatar stands next to it I appear to be maybe 5 or so inches taller. Is there a more accurate conversion chart somewhere to make in game items to scale to real life items?

I suppose you mean international feet and inches, which is essentially an english unit which everyone uses today. There is nothing wrong with the measuring units in SL. The problem lies with the avatars which during the early stages of SL, were created a bit too large. To build something that resembles something in real life, you'd have to build it bigger for it to look right next to your avatar. I'd say, make it 30-50% larger to account for camera angles and such.

There are many good converters available online which can handle the medieval measurement systems still used in some contries in the world. I sometimes use http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm

Second Lifes measurement systems are very exact. The only thing that is inexact is meauring an avatars height. There is no slider for adjusting that (neither in meters or in feet). I have some scripts for doing this inworld. They display different results, though.

I have to tell you, though, that for many reasons it is not a very good idea to reproduce buildings from First Life with exactly the same measurements in Second Life - at least if you want to "live" in those buildings. The main reason for that is the interaction of your avatar and the camera with objects inworld. Your AV needs a lot more elbow room in SL. If you look at buildings in Second Life, that "feel comfortable" to live in, for example, you will see that they are build with a floor height of 6m or 7m at least, while buildings in First Live usually have floor heights of 2.5m in my home country.

Scaling architecture is more of an art than a science in SL.

Pham & Cottonteil are correct about the avatar height issue, although my take on it is a little different from Cottonteil's. It's not that the avatar models are leftover giants from the Jurassic days of SL; it's just that they're made to allow for a full range of heights from short to normal to rediculously tall, while still appearing proportionally correct. For whatever reason, the majority of people actively choose to max out the height on their avatars. I think most people just assume that 100 on the sliders equals 100% of the maximum average height for a human being, and so they expect their avatar is around 6 feet tall. In actuality though, an avatar with every height modifier maxed is somewhere around 8-9 feet tall. This puts the average avatar height way above that of real human beings. As a result, objects built to real world dimensions usually seem small.

This avatar height capacity is not too different, by the way, from that of actual humans if you think about it. The upper average for human height is 6-6.5 feet, sure, but that in no way is the upper limit. The tallest man who ever lived, Robert Wadlow, was 1 inch shy of 9 feet tall. That's about as tall as avatars can get too. The problem is just that too many people use extremes as the norm. Hardly anyone chooses 70 on the height slider, for example, not when there are 30 more increments above it going "Ooh, pick me!" Something in the neighborhood of 90-100 almost always wins.

I agree with Pham about the "elbow room" thing too, but I disagree on the amount. There's no need to make ceilings 6 or 7 meters high. I find that 3.5M tends to be the minimum to allow for average camera placement. I usually go with about 4M, and it always feels perfectly comfortable. This usually allows floorplan measurements to stay pretty close to "real" while preserving proportionality since ceilings/floors in SL only need to be 1cm thick, as opposed to real ones, which are generally anywhere from 6 to 18 inches thick. For floorplan measurements, I usually use 1-1 scale, unless the room is to contain an excessive amount of furniture or other obstacles, in which case I scale up to allow people room to maneuver. Most people are not very good at moving around with much precision, so builds have to be sized with that in mind.

As for doors, if I make them acurate to real doors in size, I also make the jamb and lintel phantom so that excessively wide or tall avatars can walk through with no trouble. Otherwise, doors need to be bigger than normal or large avatars will get stuck. I'd go with Cottonteil's suggestion of about +30%. Somewhere around 1.25M x 3.25M is usually pretty safe if you're not gonna do the phantom frame thing. Put a door that size on a wall with a 3.5-4M ceiling height, and it will look proportional.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the info. I created a 6 foot tall block and my avatar that is 6 foot according to an avatar measuring device was maybe 5 inches taller. It would be nice if they would have more accurate avatar heights. I wasn't really recreating my real life apartment for in game use specifically. I just wanted to recreate it to test some furniture placement of the new apartment I am moving into.

I had a similar experience. Someone gave me an avatar measuring device in SL that said my avatar was the same as I am in RL. But when I recently built a to scale mock up of an addition I am planning for the back of my house, my avatar seemed far too tall.

In regard to ceiling hieghts, I have found that 4.5 meters floor to ceiling is about as low as I like to go and still have acceptable camera clearances for a house. Higher is better.

Just some fun avatar history trivia.

http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Avatar_History

One thing - the avatar measuring gadgets have never been correct. They measure your bounding box, I seem to recall, which means they leave out the very top of your head and your feet, basically.

If you measure yourself using a prim as a yardstick, you will be much more accurate.

This is not really true.

Avatars, even avatars made at the exact same height as you would be in RL, will always appear unusually large beside objects in SL that are similarly made to the same exact RL dimensions. It's to do with the proportions of the avatar and the way in which SL and the SL camera, renders 3D space. It's not just because people make tall avatars although that does happen a lot.

Also, an avatar with the sliders set to 100% is more like 7 feet tall not "8 or 9." To get one to be taller than aprox. 7 feet requires some extra fiddling and trickery.

When I make something to scale I find it handy to work to an exact ratio and make all the measurements exactly double the RL size. For furniture and most household goods this leaves you with an object of a size that you can easily work with and the multiplier is similarly easy (It's 2!).

Then when its finished I re-size it to where it "looks the right size" relative to an avatar of average proportion. In my experience this is usually about 30% bigger than the actual RL measurements.

just for giggles i prefer 5 to 5.5 m for camera breathing room, i dont like skimming the celing

ive had lower like in my underground lair, and it seems to be fine, it aslo sometimes seems to get closer and at a lower angle

Please explain the logic in what you just said. By what measure are you basing your notion of "exact same same height as you would be in RL"? There's no easy direct correlation between slider values and exact measurement units like inches, and as others have already explained, so called avatar height measurig tools are sketchy at best. The only reliable way to measure for certain is to do what Aliasi said, which is to use a prim as a measuring stick.

At any rate, it's got nothing to do with camera trickery or any convoluted rendering formula. All objects in SL, including avatars, behave just like all objects anywhere else. Whatever size you make them is the size they are, period. The only question is by what method are you determining what size means. Since prims in SL each have an absolute size that can easily be measured, they make a convenient, acurate, and quite logical measuring device by wich to assess anything that can't as easily be measured, like land formations, particle clusters, and yes, avatar height.

Try this. Stand on a flat surface and rez a cube right next to yourself. Stretch the cube upward until it reaches 1.68M tall. That's about 5'6", which as you probably know is the mid-upper average height of an American adult female. Now rez another cube directly on top of that one and stretch it sideways so the two together form an inverted L shape. Since the bottom of the new cube is even with the top of the old one, we know that bottom surface is exactly 1.68M off the ground. You've now got a relaible measuring tool. Just resize your avatar using whatever proportions you like until the top of your head just touches the bottom of that second cube. There you go; your avatar is now 1.68M tall, and it will continue to be 1.68M tall wherever you go in the world, today, tomorrow, and forever, unless you go back into appearance mode and make a change. The next time you come across another 1.68M object, your avatar will be its same height. That's all there is to it.

This measuring techniqe, by the way is the exact same one your doctor uses when you go in for a checkup. You stand on the scale, and they put that metal bar across your head (another inverted L shaped tool), and they say "You're 5'6" tall". That's just how human height is measured. It's no different for avatars.


No fiddling or trickery of any kind required. Simply put on a male shape, and then max out height, head size, neck legth, torso length, hip height, and leg thength. You'll end up with a total height of about 2.5M, or 8 feet 2.5 inches. That's without hair or shoes. Add 100% high heels and platforms, and you're at 2.65M, or 8 feet 8.25 inches. I don't know about you, but that equals 8-9 feet in my book. Add a reasonable amount of hair, by the way, and you can easily reach or exceed 9 feet in apparant height, although it's certainly debatable whether or not hair should count.

All of that is without prim attachments, animation overrides, or any of that jazz. Just use plain old sliders, and 8-9 feet is easy. Now obviously maxing all those sliders isn't gonna be the norm for everyone, but my point was 8-9 feet is acheivable for a avatar, just as it is for a real human. Back the sliders off to reasonable levels, and you can get a reasonable height. There's no need to assume avatars are inherently big just because people choose to make them that way. As I said, they can be short, average, or rediculously tall. It's all up to the user.

I really wished people would check their figures first. 1.28m is only 4'2".

Anyway, as indicated in the wiki, the initial avatar mesh was scaled based on the Primitar that was slightly taller than normal. So at a so called normal height for the slider at 50%, it will end up more or less taller than the average human. People tend to adjust their avatars to the most appealing forms first before considering real height, so theres a tendency to go tall to avoid looking unsexy.

4.19947507 feet

As usual, you respond with a book length post dripping with condescension as if everyone in the room is twelve and needs to be lectured by yourself.

Maybe you should lighten up a bit professor. By "exact same height as in RL" I was talking about those that make their avatars the same height as their RL persons as determined by these "measuring devices" of which you speak. What I was talking about here is the known issue of the SL camera by virtue of the way in which it depicts the space of SL kind of distorts the view so that an avatar will often appear much taller from the point of view of the player. It's been posted about many times in the forums by other people and you have been here longer yet not heard of it I guess. I don't really know the details exactly but I guess you could look it up if you want. (and another)...It's like you think we are all twelve or something, really.

Too bad there isn't a "yawn" smiley for these forums.

There are so many errors in your bit about the male avatar that I won't bother with that. You talk about height without prims then mention adding prims you also say this changes the height from 8' 2.5" to .... 8' 2.5"????

Anyay, I was thinking more of the default female with the sliders maxed out to 100%. Unless you distort the hips to the point of looking like a freak you end up about 7 feet and most "Amazon" type women in SL are seven feet or just over I find. I suspect the male is similar although I have never made one.

There are more factors besides average avatatar height and camera that make objects/buildings look smaller:

* Fast walking and flying make distances smaller because you get there quicker
* Lack of perspective (objects 10m away appear the same as 1m)
* Many buildings in SL are huge so we're used to it

D'oh! You're absolutely right, of course. What I had meant to type was 1.68, not 1.28. I can only surmise that when I typed the first 2 it was a typo, and then once I had read my own typing the first time, I just kept on repeating the mistake. The worst part is, I had the Google calculator open right in front of me the entire time I was writing that post. Whoops.

Thanks for pointing out the error. I've edited the post to make the correction.


I didn't know about the primitar. I'm wondering why Cory left it out of his little SL history talk at SLC if it is indeed what the current avatar is based on. He talked at length about the history and evolution of prims, textures, scripts, lighting, etc, but never mentioned this primitar thing. The story is very interesting though if it's true.

Either way, I still say the reason avatars are big is just because people make them that way. It's easy enough to stand against a measuring stick if you want any certain height.

Dianne, Dianne, Dianne. How did I know this was where you were gonna go with this? Isn't this routine getting old for you by now?

Look. I'm sorry for you that continually feel compelled to react as you do, to attack my character when I do nothing more than psot facts and then provide the details necessary to support those facts. I don't know why you seem to feel so threatened by that, but it's pretty sad.

Furthermore, I also feel sorry that you, by your own words, can't help but feel so condescended upon when, after you've made a statement based entirely on untested theory and guesswork, your ideas don't hold up to scrutiny. I only wish you could recognize that that's your problem, not mine. I've never said anything designed to make you feel low, so if you perceive it that way, clearly you feel low all on your own. One might even suggest that perhaps the reason you post untested theory is precisely so that someone will step in and point out the mistakes so that you can feel justified in your victim mentality.

Again though, that's your business, not mine, so I wish you'd stop trying to suck me into it. As I've told you before, I'm not falling for it, so give it up already. I don't know why you're so obsessively fixated on me, or why you're so compelled to react like this practically every time I post, but I'm well past caring.

As I've told you before, I'd love it if you could find a way to have a real discussion about the actual topic of each thread, rather than constantly attempting to sabotage them by igulfing them in the flames of these little temper tantrums of yours. If you've got something meaningful to contribute to the discussion, great, but if not, kindly keep the rest of this crap to yourself, or at the very least, go troll somewhere else. No one's buying here what your selling from that department.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk facts:


If that's what you were talking about, you brought that to the table a little late. It had already been pointed out how unreliable those devices are. Grab any 10 of them, and you'll get 10 different results, depending on the measurement method used. None of them are at all acurate to the actual height of the avatar you see right before your eyes.


It sounds to me like you're simply talking about linear perspective. Objects that are closer to the camera appear larger than objects that are further away. That's just elementary. Since the avatar is often the closest thing to the camera, it will naturally appear bigger than other objects around it. That's hardly and "issue" though.

Other than that, I have no idea what you might be talking about. I have used SL on at least 25 different computers, and I've never once seen an avatar (or anything else) appear to be a size other than the size it actually is.

If you want to test the perspective, by the way, it's easy to do. Try this. Stand on level ground, and adjust your camera position so you can see your avatar's whole body and the horizon. Now, without moving the camera, place an object the same height as your avatar (as measured by the method I outlined above, NOT by those inacurate auto-measuring devices) on the ground, some distance away from yourself. Grab a ruler and hold it up to your screen. Align the ruler so that it forms a line from the top of your avatar's head to the top of that object. Extend that line, and you'll see that it goes all the way to the horizon. Now trace a similar line from the bottom of your avatar's feet, to the bottom of the object, to the horizon. You'll see that both lines originate at the exact same point on the horizon. That proves that the avatar and the object are the same height, and that all the normal rules of 3D perspective are in play, just as they should be.

Again, there's no camera trickery or whacky rendering here. All objects in SL are rendered exactly the same way. There's no special, macigal, miracle-grow, "other renderer" just for avatars. Height is height is height, no matter what the object.


Dianne, look a little more carefully before you leap, please. The only error was in your reading. The first number was 8'2.5". The second was not 8'2.5", but was in fact 8'8.25". Got that? That's eight feet both times, and then two and a half inches for the first, and eight and one quarter inches the second time.

I'll grant you that's an easy mistake to make, since both numbers include nothing but eights, twos, and fives, but come on. Don't you think you should at least look twice before going off on one of these tirades of yours?

As for the "adding prims" thing. I never talked about adding prims, not once. I can't imagine why you think I did. When I gave shoe settings, those were for av shoes, not prim shoes. When I talked about hair, I was referring to av hair, not prim hair. Hell, even the word "prim" only appeared in that section of the post exactly one time, and that was to say "all of that is without prim attachments". What's unclear?


Give the same settings to a female av, and it comes out to a height of a 2.56M, which is about 8'5 (eight feet, five inches). Set the hip slider to zero, and you get a height of 2.50M, or 8'2.5" (eight feet, two and a half inches). Obviously, all other hip settings would fall inbetween, keeping the height at well over eight feet. To go down to just seven feet, you'd have to lower other settings.

I'd highly recommend trying these these things yourself before you post them as facts. To do otherwise is to spread misinformation willfully, and that's not a good thing. It would be one thing if these were just simple mistakes, like typos or something, but they're not. All signs are that you come up with an idea of how you think something might work, then decide that's how it's gotta be, and you post your theories as facts without even so much as having performed the most rudimentary of tests, and then, as if that weren't bad enough, you get pissed off when someone points out how you were incorrect.

You complain and complain about how my posts are too long, but you never seem to grasp the reason for the length. Whenever I post a how-to, I always have the relevant program (photoshop, SL, PSP, etc) open right in front of me, and I write the steps exactly as I perform them. I'm certainly not immune to typos, as Cottonteil rightly pointed out earlier, but the essence of what I'm presenting is always true because I'm writing down exactly what I'm doing as I'm doing it. If that "step-by-step'ism" results in posts that are too long for your tastes, than I cordially invite you not to read them. I won't stop doing it right, just because you happen to feel the obsseive compulsive need to make a stink about it.

Chosen, Chosen, Chosen - (sigh) don't you think this form of address is simply repeating and confirming your condescending attitude? I know you are very knowledgeable in many things SL and are indeed the 'wise old man' of 3D Building, but you do put some backs up with your superiority complex my old mate!

(Referring of course to your excruciatingly patronising: Dianne, Dianne, Dianne...)

Meet me in world Dianne and we'll make a prim Chosen and stick some prim pins in it

And Chosen, I make this post in good humour and if I see you in world you WILL get a request from my 'Hug attachment' (so beware!).

Cat x

(Kokiri 170, 130, 26)

Is it that time of the year to necro post again?
Must be some sort of memorial day or something.