Second Life is built for 9 foot men, but inhabited by 7 foot people when 5 feet X inches would do.

I build in strict 1:1 scale on Second Life, because it’s the only scale that makes the slightest bit of sense to build in. This means that I equate one real life meter directly to a Second Life meter, without making any “Second Life scale” alterations to fit “the average height” avatar. I mean, if you want to play a giant character, that’s up to you, and I fully support giant characters by building to a realistic human scale. Giants live in a giant world, but I live in the real world on Second Life and there are doors where giants can’t fit through.

Now, to make my point quite clear. These are some of my rescaling projects:

I am 5 foot 8 (1.73 meters) tall in both SL and RL, and I can tell you I don’t find real-life sofas quite this spacey.

Or bar stools quite this challenging:

As the examples point out, to fit an avatar to Second Life objects is IMPOSSIBLE.

To match a builder’s scale, this 6-foot tall guy should vary from 9 feet and 2.8 inches to  7 feet and 0.8 inches to fit these randomly picked original-out-of-the-rezz-box sizes. It’s impossible to fit “a Second Life scale”. There is no such thing. What you CAN DO is to decide to build YOUR world to scale. Size yourself and then resize everything to fit real-world dimensions.

When enough people use regular-sized avatars, the builders are going to be forced to adapt.

Check out this table chart to see what would be your accurate height in meters.

I’ve been building in a very close 1:1 scale for 2019, and although it’s a bit of a pain… It’s so rewarding to see everything matching, including people. And how I’m now able to eyeball an object’s size in my own scenes to a literal centimeter.

For a rough guide, I use my own ZEN METAL Systematic guide objects all the time. There’s also the ZEN METAL Bums On Seat -tool for rescaling AVsitter positions after a resize. The package is free and contains detailed instructions and an eBook if you’re into trying it out.