Scale for VR?

In Second Life™ we talk about scale. Some of us are big on getting people and things to RL scales in our virtual world (VW). I’m a fan and I’ve written several articles about building to scale. Now people interested in Virtual Reality (VR) are thinking about scale at entirely new levels. The site Road to VR has an article up about how the fashion industry may use VR to allow people to model RL clothes in VR prior to purchase.

Second Life Fashion

Second Life Fashion

Imagine you could specify your avatar based on your RL shape… that could be a good or bad thing. :/ But, the fashion industry is thinking of using the idea to allow us to try on clothes in VR and decide if we like the fit. I suppose if it fits then we can order it and an Amazon drone will deliver it. Well, it is a dream at the moment. But, an Australian company has a proof of concept demo out for the Oculus Rift.

The idea is also to get away from sizes. Ladies know that sizes from various designers vary, often varying as a way to attempt to flatter the female ego. ‘Oh, I can wear a size 2…’ Personally the miss sizing for psychological advertizing just annoys me. 

The VR process would allow more of an ‘on demand’ clothes manufacturing process. Whatever the company thinks a size 8 is could be used as a starting place for the size 8 one thinks they ware. The buyer could then see that the dress was too tight in the hips and too loose around the breasts. (Yeah, it is my friends that run into this, not me. No never. NOT!,) In VR that could be corrected to get a good fit then the dress could actually be made.

This is a dream at this point. Those of us that deal with Fitted Mesh clothes are finding out how complicated the process of getting Fitted to actually fit can be. Add to that the complication of translating to RL sizes. But, these problems can be worked out. And remember. Second Life is not the example of mimicking RL when it comes to scale, which makes things more difficult than they need to be. It would be easier in systems designed to mimic RL scale and sizes from the start.

If SL is going to participate in the RL/VR fashion revolution, the Lab is going to have to think about making  our avatars much easier to shape to RL proportions and sizes. Breast sizes 0 to 100 tell me nothing about which setting might represent a 36 or 38 inch breast size with a B or C cup. And the height size being off by 6 inches (15cm±) doesn’t help.

We know things need to change to make building to scale in SL more intuitive and natural. I think even the Lab knows what needs to change, we’ve asked often enough. It is just a matter of what things Ebbe decides need to be fixed and changed and the priorities he sets. We’ll find out over time.

3 thoughts on “Scale for VR?

  1. I have seen the scale issue raised many times now. No doubt this is still a issue on SL.
    I will admit that didn’t have this much in mind on my old SL buildings, but over the time i think i am getting better, i try to take scale into account when i build on blender.
    When i uploaded and used my house inworld, i noticed another problem due to the fact the building was smaller, and i have never seen this one mentioned: it was harder to walk inside it. Yeah this is expected. But when i compare the SL avatar movement with other games, its noticeably less responsive and precise… i think mainly because the fact we steer with keyboard, maybe the physics doesn’t help either.
    Lately, i found myself using the mouse to steer on third person mode too, this is, clicking over my avatar or tag while i walk; on Blackdragon viewer you can click anywhere. This way, you have to use both hands, but you have a better control to where you head and also turn faster and with better results.
    Since then, the amount of bricks-and-mortar on my avi blood as been drastically reduced. I eat less walls now. /me nods

    • If you walk inside to-scale buildings, you also need to adjust your default camera position.

      I mouse steer too.

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