Gulliver vs. the Brobdinagians

I built my avatar to be 5'9". That's above average height for a woman in RL.

In SL though, I seem to be smaller than everyone except the tinies. Ah well, fine, this IS a fantasy land and all that and if people have more fun walking around at 8'6" then I have no issue with that, other than it probably has something to say about society and it also makes people who WANT to appear taller than average completely out of luck.

What does seem weird to me though, is the massiveness of so many objects that really don't need to be so massive. Regular house doorways that soar overhead to the point that they should be reskinned as the doorways to Canterbury Cathedral. A teakettle the size of a coffee table. A dagger the size of a Bustersword (extra points for those that recognize the reference.)

I do know the arguments about the need to have room to swing the cameras, and the fact that the overhead camera view tends to make things look different than if you were looking from eye-level of your avatar. I get those issues.

However, when my avatar must INTERACT with a thing, it's not about the overhead camera illusion anymore. The glaring fact is that my avatar's head is shorter than the back of the chair that she's sitting on; that picking up a spoon makes her look like a comic book character; and that walking through an insanely tall doorway makes -me- feel overwhelmed by environmental grandeur - not the effect you want, say, for someone entering into a tiny, cozy, country house.

In other words, as long as I'm standing far back from things, yes, the illusion of normalcy is maintained in favor of the overhead camera. The MOMENT I have to interact with something such as walking close to it, picking it up, sitting on it, or going through it, my suspension of disbelief is completely gone and the world becomes weird. Seeing as some objects are essentially made to be interacted with in this way rather than being stared at from across a room (say, chairs), this is not a minor consideration.

But didn't I just say that most people in SL are huge? Shouldn't furniture be more geared to the majority?

Sure, I understand that notion. Some of these things I'm talking about have got to be too big even for the biggest Avatar. But if you are intentionally making stuff entirely designed to fit the giant avatars, or just reflexively make everything big because you're designing it from across the room, PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE let the rest of us scale it down to normal size. Give us just that one permission, unless of course, you have a specific reason for it being exactly the size it is no matter who is using it.

I'm standing in a furniture store that shall remain nameless that has beautiful poses, textures, and low prim designs but I will not buy any of it because I can't resize them.

Thanks to all, and /rant.

I think a large part of it is the .010 size limit being the smallest you can make something. We build things relative to the object itself. For instance, I make guitars. I've had to make tuning pegs disproportionately larger so the owner could scale the guitar as a whole down so it looked less silly on them.

Holding Ctrl+Shift while editing an object with mod permission let's you size down the entire object, and most shop owners are happy to make no mod items smaller before you buy them.

Sometimes though, the creator does just happen to be a huge avatar and build things with themselves in mind. That's (second) life I guess.

In all that time you could have just scaled your avatar up a few more inches, so you fit in with the rest of SL society.

I think you're missing the point, Robustus. It's not about conforming to the common scale.

In any case, what a coincidence Fiona, my avi is 5'9" (1.75 meters) tall as well. High five.

High Five!

>>I think a large part of it is the .010 size limit being the smallest you can make something. We build things relative to the object itself. For instance, I make guitars. I've had to make tuning pegs disproportionately larger so the owner could scale the guitar as a whole down so it looked less silly on them.<<<

I get that too. When I get modifiable objects, and something is .010, I just scale that part upward so I can stretch the rest of the object down until I'm happy. I understand some folks aren't comfortable with tweaking with parts of objects, and because of that it's just fine to build oversized pegs. That wasn't what I was complaining about though. If you were building guitars the size of couches and selling them as non-mod, that would be closer to the mark.

>>>Holding Ctrl+Shift while editing an object with mod permission let's you size down the entire object, and most shop owners are happy to make no mod items smaller before you buy them.<<<

Sure is easiest to have the resizing permission. That's pretty much what I was requesting.

>>>Sometimes though, the creator does just happen to be a huge avatar and build things with themselves in mind. That's (second) life I guess.<<<

I understand that too. But when we're talking closet doors that are 20 feet high, I don't think it was about their 8' avatar. It's about this strange SL notion that the only size that matters is the one you see from across a large room, rather than the one you see when you're interacting with the object. Yes, I've been told directly that this is why things are built on the not-just-large-but-huge scale. I haven't figured out why the former scale has been rated more important than the latter by so many builders.

My post was mainly to request that oversized things be made resizable for their purchasers, but also it was a heads up to those builders who don't realize that their stuff is quite as huge as it actually is. If you want to make a cozy shack, you REALLY need to scale that thing down or people will see that you're trying to make a cozy shack but wonder why it feels like an amphitheater in the twilight zone.

I mean, I love my beautiful teakettle, I really do. It was made with such attention to shape and texture, I can't quite believe its builder really intended it to be four feet long, regardless of the height of their avatar. It looked normal size across the room, and I think that's how it was built.

my character has gone from about 6ft 10in which is about max for a female to 5ft 9

i always check everything i make with my different av's so that there is nominal adjustment needed

granted my walls are high and doors are huge on my homes but i tried to build more to scale and im sorry but the camera thing bugged me too much id be lookin at the 2nd floor while walkin around the first floor so i make large high cieling rooms but my furniture is normal looking no matter what av i war unless its my tine have to buy special stuff for that one

*snickers*



.

I guess the core issue here is mod permissions. As a business owner, it's a difficult thing to deal with, and I really wish there were an easier way around it. Ideally, we could put out two versions of an item. One would be no copy/no mod with transfer permission, and the other would be mod/copy permission no transfer. About all we could do is add at least a prim per item (sign that says click THIS to buy THIS permission instead), but for someone like me who has several hundred items and is already using almost 3500 prims... The linden dollars start to add up.

/me goes to see if I actually have extra prim space to do that.

I was having a semi related conversation about this with a friend about this today.
And my take was that if you could make your av Really Small yet still in proportion then
you could effectively expand your land usability.

I thought of this because she was showing me a miniature castle.

Thank you to all the store owners looking into a way to ease the pain

As far as needing to move the cameras, yes, I agree functionality is important. For some reason though, it hasn't looked wrong for me to have high ceilings but normal doors, windows, and furniture. I guess growing up in the age of cathedral ceilings has skewed my notions of plausibility.

It occurred to me also that there might be a slightly more normal span of heights if people could see what the dial on their character height was actually pointing to. When you're making your avatar and you see "This is a bit higher than the middle" I think most people assume that the range they're dealing with is fairly normal, and therefore slightly above middle for a woman must be about 5'6". (It isn't.) Unless they go find a height measuring device, they will never really know if they are big or small unless they compare themselves to other people and objects.

And a double HEH! for the idea of living very tiny. I wonder how plausible it would be to make a lilliputian village (since I've already brought up the brobdinagians). I know you can't make things smaller than .010, but a lot of things could still be made.