This game is huge! (Measurement/Scale Study)

Eiagra

Note: You may not find this post interesting if you don't like measuring things or determining scale of creatures and objects in games.

So, something I've been wanting to figure out for a while is exactly how tall my character is. My main is an Orc with max Height on the slider, but there wasn't really much of a definitive way to figure things out that I could find at first. Unless they decide to add one in housing, there isn't a measuring stick I could prop up and angle around to determine height.

Then I learned Fire Rune. Fire Rune and its morphs have a 3 meter radius -- the smallest skill I could find with a targeting circle. 3 meter radius = 6 meter diameter. It was a start. Now I just needed to find a tile with enough "fidelity" to measure with. Measuring just pixels wouldn't work out so well, since camera distortion would ultimately screw up the numbers. Ground tiles would help preserve some semblance of scale regardless of camera angle.

I eventually settled on decorative tiles commonly found in Altmer territory. Specifically, on the upstairs landing at The Vaults of Velyn Harbor, as it was much closer to an even-ish number to work with -- 18 "half-tiles" (or 9 full tiles of this pattern) fit inside the 6 meter (or 600 cm) diameter. This gave me a sort of measuring stick: 1 "half-tile" = 33-1/3 cm (roughly -- even with these aids, accuracy is still not exact).

First, I decided to measure my character's foot. It would help with seeing if numbers would agree proportion-wise, and it's the simplest object to measure on my person since it's touching the ground tile and doesn't animate or distort when you're just standing still. With adjustments for pixel error, I came to an estimation of ~44 cm (or ~17.33"). Simple enough. Note, it was also maxed on the slider for character creation.

Height was more difficult due to two factors: Camera distortion, and animation. There isn't really a good lay-down animation players have access to that has their body and legs straight and their feet unangled. The one pose used for some laid-out corpses might work, but players can't do that. /saluteloop would be fine if I could do it laying down to match the ground tile (or if I could find a wall tile and paste the Fire Rune circle on the wall -- but I can't). The best I could do was /sleep2.

After a bit of fiddling around with screenshots, the best estimate I could come to was ~254-255 cm (or ~100"). It compared with my earlier measurement to agree with proportions well enough, but I can still only really call this an estimate until I find a better animation or improve my methods.

Thus, from what I can determine, a max-height Orc is around 8'4" in height in this game. And since most doors are scaled to be something like 1.5x my height (using the bank in Evermore as an example), and it's probably around double my height from floor to ceiling (in the same building)... everything in this game is freaking huge. :P

So, yeah, there ya go. Hope someone finds that interesting. If someone has ideas on better methods with greater accuracy, ground tiles that have a regular, uninterrupted pattern that's smaller than 18-tiles-per-6-meters, etc, feel free to drop a comment.

Or if the devteam just wants to put a measuring stick in furniture for housing, that'd be handy too.

WhiteMage

Interesting.

In video games, I have found that the z-axis does seem to be distorted relative to the x and y-axes, which already have their own arbitrary unit of measurement whose name happens to coincide with ours (meter). It's either that, or my character can jump 2-3 meters, often as high as they are tall. I can't do that irl.

Personally, it's not hard for me to reconcile this and regain my suspension of disbelief by accepting the distorted axes (plural or axis, right?).

Eiagra

Hmm, that's something I hadn't considered. I know that games will often give unrealistic abilities for things like jumping (Mario is a pretty good example here), and scale is often upped for building interiors to account for camera angle (and to minimize a sense of claustrophobia), but I kinda hope that the X,Y axes have the same scale as the Z axis. Otherwise, that throws all sorts of things askew for measurements.

Tomg999

Now someone has to measure their stride, and then we can see how big Tamriel really is.

Shunravi

Well, did you use your calculations to see if the acceleration of gravity is more or less in this game? Could explain jumping height...

borgking

seriously??

Shunravi

borgking wrote: »

seriously??

Go check out game theory on YouTube. People like this stuff.

Wow

Yeah in this game everything are so spacious, I remembered playing skyrim and I had to "GET OUT" my companion because the tunnel were so cramped for the both of us.

Nocturnalan

When I read the title I thought we were getting land mass sizes but the info is still very good. Thanks for taking the time to share this.

Jim_Pipp

I wish I could click both 'insightful' and 'awesome'. It takes so much imagination to even think of this question, let alone a reasonable way to answer the question. I really enjoyed this post.

jedtb16_ESO

um.... ok.

erm...... no offence, but.....errrrrr...... how can i put this?

do you have a life?

Darkonflare15

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

um.... ok.

erm...... no offence, but.....errrrrr...... how can i put this?

do you have a life?

We are all playing a game here. We can not judge.

danno8

Are you sure the graphic for Fire Rune on the floor is actually 6m? Sometimes these things trigger if a character is further away than the edge of the graphic.

The 6m could be even bigger! (or smaller I guess)

Eiagra

Just got home from work, so all the replies in one neat little post!

Tomg999 wrote: »

Now someone has to measure their stride, and then we can see how big Tamriel really is.

It's within the realm of possibility! But maybe not something I personally would want to aim for, a bit larger scale for what free time I have. This was just a random "I have a couple hours free this morning, let's satisfy this minor bit of curiosity," project.

Shunravi wrote: »

Well, did you use your calculations to see if the acceleration of gravity is more or less in this game? Could explain jumping height...

That's a pretty interesting idea. Is it possible to determine the general mass/size of a planet if one knows that information?

Shunravi wrote: »

Go check out game theory on YouTube. People like this stuff.

I've been known to watch GT and GT Live every now and then.

danno8 wrote: »

Are you sure the graphic for Fire Rune on the floor is actually 6m? Sometimes these things trigger if a character is further away than the edge of the graphic.

The 6m could be even bigger! (or smaller I guess)

Yeah, that is a distinct possibility. I'm operating under the big presumption that the targeting ring for Fire Rune is doing what it says on the label, and that it's a 3m radius circle. Without knowing the mechanics for how the targeting ring works, what its actual size is, the size of player collision, etc, I can only make a fair presumption of accuracy based on what's provided. Could be mistaken, though! I'm open to other methods to figure this out. ...Like a 1 meter measuring stick with 10 cm notches we can buy once Housing goes live...

Also, not gonna lie, that kinda measuring stick might be really handy for players wanting to get more info about their skill radius and range and determine their accuracy, especially used in conjunction with combat skeletons.

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

do you have a life?

Sure. I also have a healthy amount of intellectual curiosity about the world around me -- including virtual worlds around me. Don't you? Isn't there something you've ever randomly wondered about? And then just randomly decided to figure out the answer? It doesn't have to be anything important or ground-breaking. Just little things that make you go, "Hmm..." That's what happened here.

Artemiisia

Eiagra wrote: »

Sure. I also have a healthy amount of intellectual curiosity about the world around me -- including virtual worlds around me. Don't you? Isn't there something you've ever randomly wondered about? And then just randomly decided to figure out the answer? It doesn't have to be anything important or ground-breaking. Just little things that make you go, "Hmm..." That's what happened here.

I tried to figure out women

back to topic, thats actually some impressive thinking, now if only I could figure out how many miles my main has run

ArchMikem

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

um.... ok.

erm...... no offence, but.....errrrrr...... how can i put this?

do you have a life?

For a lot of people this is their life. Some people just love numbers. Don't hate the smart ones.

I can always respect people who do this, you do work I would HATE to do. But damn, an eight foot high Orc?

Rohamad_Ali

Cyrodiil is one of the largest regions in Tamriels map . I can ride across Cyrodiil in less the 10 minutes . The game is actually a Miniature Golf version of the real scope . That or the planet is the size of Pluto .

Eiagra

Random interesting findings! A buddy of mine and I did a quick duel and discovered the following:

- Fire Rune (or at least its morph Volcanic Rune) does trigger at the point of the targeting circle.
- Players seem to have zero-point collision (as opposed to a collision box). Charging into another player in a duel places you directly at the same coordinates they're standing on.

So as long as the 3m radius of Fire Rune is actually considered to be 3m from the behind-the-scenes math, it seems like it can be a reliable source of measurement.

Shunravi

I was thinking you might want to try something....

In pvp, the aoe circumference is clearly visable as red circle. Now the simple sugestion is that you find someon in an oposing aliance (or maybe a duel) who could help with this and allow for a persistant aoe you can view from different angles to confirm. But you have already done that more or less....

Now the more interesting idea imo would be to establish the rough size of the tiles in a building with two floors. Then have the person of the other aliance (or duelist) cast a large aoe like calthrops on a different floor from you. Because the aoes in this game are supposedly perfect spheres as far as i can tell, they show up as a smaller aoe circle on a more distant point from the center. Then you could calculate the distance between the two parallel planes of the aoe and figure out even more from there...






At the very least you may be able to determine any distortion in the vertical (z) axis.

kevlarto_ESO

Nice post, and some food for thought

Shunravi

Heck it might work with healing spells.