• nothing wrong with wanting to be 7-foot tall, but they should at least KNOW that they are unusually tall!

Some of my homes have been described as 'mouselook small' :-P

My avatar is 1.90m, and I'm the shortest human avatar I've ever met. My height slider is 50, which should mean "average height".

There are three problems here:
1. Middle of height slider means 1.90m (6ft 2in) tall. I suppose average height in RL is more like 1.70m, probably lower in Asia.
2. llGetAgentSize, which returns avatar bounding box and is used in many height detectors, usually returns smaller height. For my avatar, it returns 1.72m instead of 1.90m. Compare your avatar with prims if you don't believe me.
3. As slider, default and average SL proportions are simply too big - which means that once you change your height to something non-gigantic, you usually have to tweak the rest of your body... and some proportions you can't tweak or simply look bad. For male avatar it's much easier to be shorter than for woman avatar.

But yes.. a guide to the size of an AV in RL measurements in apperance mode is a great idea.

I'm a nice average female RL height. But I'm actually extremely short in SL, on average.

The point is to enable residents to make informed decisions, if they want to. I think it's clear that many residents want to, and that most new residents would use the information when developing their avatars and, potentially, when choosing content.

It would contribute a lot toward better expectations of avatar sizes for content creators. That would allow freedom for more creativity and better stuff for avatars of all sizes. The experience would improve for "natural" sized avatars and for small and large avatars, because attachments could be so designated accurately. The vibrancy of content for Tinies demonstrates this fact: content creators can predict the body size and thus create very detailed content for it.

There are a lot of unnatural things about SL. We can fly, e.g. But we know when we're flying, we can customize the way we fly, and we can know where land owners restrict flying. That's possible because that information is available to us, and the world is better for it. Why not enable that kind of improvement with avatar heights?

I've read the arguments against them, and every single one smacks of someone with no background in visual design. The SL graphics engine is not great, but SL can pull of seriously better visuals than most people, including most Lindens, realize. A part of building a great visual experience is the technology, sure, and I can respect that it's probably easier said than done to make improvements on that front. I'd even say there's been some seriously impressive things done by LL in that area, and from the sneak peeks I've seen at some of the coming improvements (shadows, directional lighting, light bouncing off of surfaces) it seems like the tech is going to take a few big leaps.

Unfortunately the other side of the coin has been neglected to a criminal level. The people side. Not everyone who joins SL is going to be a graphics professional, or have any background at all in visual design. Most people who make content in SL are going to be complete amateurs, enjoying a hobby by making things for SL. Now, this is not a bad thing, but it is up to you, Linden Lab, to provide them with the necessary tools to nudge them in the right direction.

Giving everyone their height information is one of those tools. It helps set a standard for scale which everyone will acknowledge, and most, just because it's there and visible to all, will follow. This allows people to work within that scale, knowing that what they make will appear the proper size to everyone who comes around to see/buy/use it.

Right now this is not the case. People are constantly trying to shop for animations only to find those they've picked up are useless because they make the av sink into the ground, or float above it, because the avatar is too short or tall and the animator didn't even consider scale to be an issue. There's tonnes of no-mod furniture out there, none of it built to scale for anything but the creator's own avatar. Same with vehicles and houses/skyboxes. Environments for people to visit have eyegouging scale issues, if not with items built into the environment (which there often are), then with the avatars who visit. Ever seen a 6 foot tall avatar walk by an 8 and a half foot tall avatar who herself is dwarfing a 7 foot werewolf? The 8 foot tall person in nearly every case probably thinks that they're only 6 feet tall, or has never given any thought to it at all. They're probably too busy ARing the 6 foot tall avatar of ageplay to even think about it.

Ever seen a really top quality environment in SL which looks every bit as good as a professional game environment? No, you haven't. You might even think you have, but truth be told every build in SL has to make concessions for the total lack of universal scale in SL. This is obvious to most any art professional who takes a good look, and contributes to the negative opinion most casual observers have of SL's graphics, even if they can't quite figure out what's wrong.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but this is important and it really seems like no Linden who reads the Jira realizes it. It seems like LL seriously needs some design professionals on staff. Graphics people who can point things like this out and push them through development. Maybe I should make another Jira about that?

Adding height info isn't even a huge ordeal that requires serious tech break-throughs, The info is all there in SL. There are one or two height detectors that can tell you exactly how tall an avatar is, prim measurement accurate. Unfortunately, the casual user is probably never going to think about it unless it's right there in front of them when they first make their avatar. Those who do think of it are more likely to wind up with an incorrect height detector that is way off, only adding to the problem.

Quick fix is needed ASAP, even if technically better fix is coming afterwards. Even small pointer in appearance window that 30% height slider is "average height" instead 50% would mean so much!

There really should be an in-depth tutorial to the av editor to explain these things to new users. Even some simple pop up messages with basic info like that would be incredibly useful.

If it's one point on each slider denoting "average" (and then if you move all sliders to higher than average you can expect tall avatar), or some sort of comparison with figure of average height male/female/furry/elephant is of less importance.

TWO DAYS later they get back to me with a screenshot and a declaration that it will be included in the very next version of the viewer.

So....what's LL's excuse?

This is seriously the bellwether issue that shows just how little Linden Lab understands content creation. That includes corporate and educational content. Not only do creators need easy access to this information, but everyone does. If I make an animation for a 5'5" avatar, and someone with an 8' avatar wanders into my shop, they have to be aware that the 5'5" animation probably isn't going to work for them. Going up another level, I as the animator need to be aware of the avatar height I'm making this animation around before I can even know to state that it will only work for avatars of a certain height.

If I'm trying to build a to-scale virtual building that is going to be constructed in the real world, people need to know that their 7'8" avatar probably won't fit, and why.

We all need to be on the same page as far as scale in a world were content is created on the fly by the userbase and we have the ability to make our avatars anywhere from 5' tall to almost 9' tall. Everything in SL is measured by the same metric units. a 10x10 prim will fit snugly into a 10x10 parcel. Avatars can be easily measured by the same metric units, but the information is hidden. Not only that, but the issue is confused by people mistaking AgentHeight for avatar heigh which has created no end of content and social problems.

Game designers get around this by limiting your options are far as height. You also don't need a proportions guide for games like Fallout 3 or City of Heroes because you can't change the limb length, or are limited to pre-sets that work with your chosen body type. SL has no such restrictions, and so needs to provide tools to make these things known to users.

Motivated real life businesses, SL solution providers and developers on the SL Grid require consistent, accurate, and reliable metric standards and tools for delivering richer and evermore life-like in-world experiences to residents, and/or, for accurately demonstrating 3D model simulations using the SL platform for their respective commercial activities. Accurate metrics are highly beneficial and make for better project builds and planning, and better sim and urban management by in-world businesses and residents who wish to apply their skills with increasing precision and accuracy for a variety of applications including, meetings, more life-like and interactive objects & content, scientific/educational simulations, 2D/3D aesthetic design and products, and pre-visualized Architectural Building and Demonstration which is on the rise in SL also.

'Avatar Height/Scale' matched to 'Prim Size/Dimension' is currently not proportional in SL; whereby Avatar metric and Prim metric relative dimensions are disproportionate and do not match. In other words, without the ability to scale a taller and more detailed Avatar meshes down to the size of a realistically-sized prim, we will not have an SL reflecting more accurate real world dimensions. This is important to SL as an application, because at the core of this killer application exists the notion that it is a form of reality simulator.

The Science Fiction sims have continually kept running into this planning dilemma over time, meaning we are not able to deploy proper metric avatar and building construction techniques to the full extent that we would like to. We can compensate for this anomaly using a number of less elegant workarounds, but believe that the significance of this issue (seeing it as an 'opportunity') cannot be emphasized enough.

The flow on effects of fixing this issue are huge! Notification of this correction as a new introduced feature in-world would stimulate the in-world economy due to a shift in trend towards more real life-like construction and modernization. The average height of customized avatars would fall. Oversized shopping malls would inevitably become life-size boutiques. Builders who would be unlikely to modernize or have no motivation to update existing builds would be spurred on to update both avatar and construction in order to conform to the new, dimensional standard, "A metric where prim and avatar could be matched to real life scale." LL in the past has had to go to great effort to promote better urban planning. This correction may be considerably easier to get residents to adopt and the community transition may become automated.

I have upgraded this issue to showstopper status because of the amount of time it has existed and from a scientific or education professional perspective in consideration of their expectation to be able to model builds and project simulations in-world according to real-life scale when the feature does not specifically exist.

Dimensional metric proportion and consistency between AVATAR and PRIM is not available to the SL community and needs to be in future to ensure that SL can scientifically provide an accurate toolset for the 3D simulation platform users and builders of tomorrow.

I'm moving this to at least "Major".

From LL's own definition:

"Major loss or impairment of function, including rarer crashes."

This is a huge impairment of function, as explained in detail above.

I would also say that it's not a stretch to argue that this is Critical, the sheer amount of content that has been crippled by the lack of this feature is mind blowing.

"Nice to have." I stand by my statement that this issue is a bellwether on how well LL knows what it's doing. "Nice to have" is a slap in the face to every pro artist who's ever given SL a chance. It's a slap in the face to every corporate and educational institution who has ever looked into making use of SL in a professional capacity.

National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood

Let's get people to stop with the 8-10' tall avatars, it's ridiculous, considering how small sims already are.

From an art asset creator's point of view, however, it's definitely a Showstopper. As a content creator, as someone who specializes in making graphics, designing avatars and creating environments for people to visit and interact with, trying to create a cohesive, and immersive environment, I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is one of a handful of issues which have resulted in the world at large viewing SL as a hideous graphics disaster. That will not change, no matter how much shiney is added, until basic design functionality like this is addressed.

Under the circumstances created by the lack of shared height information it is literally impossible to make the most of SL's capabilities without making your content useless to the average SL user. An architect trying to show a virtual representation of a building they are working on would find that most SL users, likely including the people they intend to display the structure for, cannot even walk in the front door. Upscaling, a flawed solution in the best scenarios, would result in a need for more area to accommodate the larger structure. (Hopefully we'll also get a better camera position, too. That's another obstacle to environment design!)

Not providing a simple proportions guide, or at least allowing users a variety of proportions checking poses to put their avatar in while they edit, is equivalent to forcing an illustrator to draw a character without letting them lay down a basic understructure. T-rex arms are not, in nearly any case, a fashion choice. Idealized proportions, sure! Ideally, LL would provide a small selection of proportion guides to accommodate the style of body type the user wanted to go for. Having a guide also makes it easier, as any illustrator will tell you, to exaggerate those proportions.

In any case, both of these changes need to be implemented before, well before, a new av mesh is added so that content creators can begin adapting content to the unified scale.

Please note that the freebie AV ruler actually gives a false reading, you are actually about 6 inches taller than it says, if you convert what it says into meters and make a prim of that height, it will come up to your neck when rezzed, guess its an issue with llGetAgentSize.

I currently have my AV height slider at 0 to get a true 5'9, the average true height of the majority of avatars seems to be over 7 feet tall, but then the standard newbie AVs given to new players are well over 6 foot in true height, so you can hardly wonder at it.

That said, those inaccurate height detectors are almost worse than nothing, especially when that's the information people use when they ban avatars for age play based on height. For instance, my avatar is actually 5'2" tall. That is smallish by human standards, but not unreasonable. It is, in fact, my real life height. But by a bounding box height detector, I show up as 4'8" tall. That is the average height of a ten year old girl. And in comparison to the seven and eight footers out there, my avatar looks to be the size of a kindergartener.

Lest anyone think it's only a problem for small people like me, an avatar that is 5'5" tall like an average human woman comes out as 4'11" on the bounding box height detectors, which is the average height of a twelve year old girl. As a matter of fact, if you use the bounding box measurement, most women would come out looking like children.

Thank you, Penny, for updating your description. I absolutely DO NOT want to have the bounding box height incorporated into the viewer. It would cause no end of trouble. We need an accurate way to measure avatars in the appearance screen, available from the time of avatar creation.

I'm baffled by the fact that Linden Lab does not seem to have made the connection between creating detailed, immersive visuals in SL, and making SL more appealing to the potential users. Or, alternately, how they don't seem to have anyone on staff with a design background who can point at this as a pretty significant way of improving SL. (More variety in avatar sizes, effectively doubling the size of sims, allowing residents to build more efficiently saving prims for a more detailed SL would all be significant improvements achieved by this.)