Talk:Second Life 2.0
Avatar is bigger than a normal human / SL 1.0 "meter" does not equal a real world meter
Because all in-world objects have been built slightly larger than normal to compensate for the oversize avatar, this means the in-world measurement system cannot be used to accurately duplicate real-life objects; the resulting object is too small compared to the typical avatar. A house built using actual real-world measurements would be slightly too small compared to the avatar.
Due to this minor early design flaw of the avatar, the in-world definition of "meters" is meaningless. It would be better to stop calling them meters and use another SL-specific term (such as the "munge"), so that people don't confuse it with correct real-world measurements.- This isn't a bug or a design flaw. It's a social problem. People choose to have larger then average avatars which led to the average SL avatar being larger. Buildings were consequently made larger to compensate for peoples tastes in larger then average avatars. This isn't a technical problem. -- Strife Onizuka 12:26, 5 April 2008 (PDT)
Visual object size doesn't match physical size
Physical and visual sizes don't match because of the problems inherit with detecting collisions of small objects moving at high speeds. The math looks something like: Probability = (A.Size + B.Size + buffer_size) * FPS / |A.Velocity - B.Velocity|. If you halve the buffer_size, then to maintain the same Probability you must either half the max velocity, double the min size, or double the FPS. If you remove buffer_size altogether the changes required are much more drastic. To put things simply, you cannot simulate physics in real time perfectly, you have to cut corners. This is SVC-1139. -- Strife Onizuka 12:26, 5 April 2008 (PDT)