More Awesome Than You!

Just curious to know. On The Sims 1 it showed how big a house was and I'm bored and measuring houses.
Just got finished watching HGTV. lol

 I believe they are between 3 and 4 square feet.

Uh, how many square feet in one square meter?
The tiles are one meter on a side.

1' = 0.3048 meter

A square that's 3 square feet in area has sides measuring just over  1.73 feet.

When building from floor plans, I've  typically gone with the tiles being three feet on a side (9 square feet in area() I 've seen people build at a scale of 2-foot squares (4 square feet in area.)  to avoid routing problems, but I've always felt that made the houses enourmous.

Sooner or later you will stop using those obsolete units. Resistance is futile. You will be metricated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SI-metrication-world.png).

Hey, President Carter tried. I recall spending most of the late 70s diligently larning metric, because we were absolutely planning to join the rest of the world. Alas, bureaucracy will out (http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Metric/lc1136a.cfm), and all that's left are two-liter bottles of Coke. Oh yeah, and science uses metrics.


As far as the grid size goes, I tend to equate one grid to 9 square feet (or 1 square meter when I'm feeling British). It tends to provide sufficient space for movement, and as Notovny pointed out, it keeps buildings from getting too large. The only drawback, as near as I can tell, is that sims don't like one-tile-wide hallways. Too...crowded, perhaps?

From what I recall, in Sims 1 each grid is 4' x 4'. I think that's fairly standard for most architectural grids.

It was Ford who tried.  Carter did not take office until 1977.

Metric is only easier to learn mainly because of the powers of ten. The main problem with acceptance comes from tradition: people are still accustomed to the old quantities they use everyday. For example, people in the UK are still nostalgic about their pints of beer, because a half-litre jug will give them less beer per serving.

By the way, here's how a one-tile-widenarrow street looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Street,_Exeter  :D

ooh thanks everyone

I quit building from floor plans in the traditional sense. I just build the outside, using window placement as a guide. Kind of hard to explain, but easy to eye-ball. This window looks like a 2-tile window, the spaces here look about the size of a 1-tile, etc. Then I compute total tiles on each outer side and pick the closest lot size. The inside I just do how it makes sense to me...I find that the way the sim world does size ends in enormous homes or tiny unusable rooms, no happy medium. Plus, most of the homes I love from floorplans contain too many bedrooms/bathrooms/bonus rooms. I prefer 2-3 beds, 2- 2 1/2 baths. Although my current legacy family is in a 5 bed, 5 bath colonial. Designed from scratch as part of a set of 4 1-space-from-edge homes specifically to house larger families...'cause it's so time for Free Love to hit Queen's Cove.

My mistake. Now that I actually read the article I linked <smirk> I see that the Metric Board was established in the Ford administration. I guess I just associate Carter with having pushed it during his administration.

Tiles are one meter on a side, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On metrification, almost every metric equivalent to the common measurements is bigger. A meter is longer than a yard. A liter has more volume than a quart. A half-kilo is still heavier than a pound. Every US product that I know of carries the size expressed as common and metric both.

But the size units are in round common units, not even metric ones. With perhaps the exception of medicines (in milligrams) and the previously mentioned 2-liter soda bottles, manufacturers would have to commit to the expense of new packaging and then would have to raise prices because there would be more product using an even metric approximate-equivalent package.

I don't know of any marketing people that would like to be the first to unilaterally raise their product price. The soda size change happened as a result of a (successful) promotion to increase market share by giving a little more soda for the same money.

From my rememberance of when the 2 and 3 liter soda bottles began to appear, I don't think anyone would have trouble adjusting to the new size. I just think that too many people would not look at the size or price per unit, just whoever had the larger price sticker would have a sales disadvantage.

In metric, I tend to think of tiles as 121.92 cm x 121.92 cm.  ;D

Tiles are either 3ft or 1meter - it's hard to tell which.  They are definitely not 4ft or Sims beds would be 10ft long and ceilings would be 12ft high.   A sim lying on the floor is 2 tiles long.

Well, let's test that. I think they're 4x4.

(http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9179/tile02aq6.th.jpg) (http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tile02aq6.jpg)

What do you think? It's not unreasonable for a door to be 8.5 feet (in fact, I seem to recall that's standard).

EDIT: Then again, maybe doors are just a lot smaller than they should be:

(http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/139/tile03btl3.th.jpg) (http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tile03btl3.jpg)

I went through all this for writing my curtain creation guide on MTS2. Floor tiles are 1 metre square and walls are 3 metres high. If you want to measure stuff in game for the purpose of creating content etc then these will help: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=125750 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=125750)

Some day I will get round to updating the guide with all the window measurements from Pets onwards.

No way are 8ft 5in doors standard!!! Most modern ceilings are not even that high. Dizzy, just whereabouts in the world do you live?

Standard doors (in the US) are 6'8" or 2.03 meters high - and 3' or .92 meters wide. It is reasonable, then, to assume Sims ceilings are 8 feet high - and a grid one meter (39.3 inches) wide.

(By the way - I could be wrong, but the door you showed in the example is not a standard height. I believe it's a bit shorter than the justa door, which is the standard size.)

Sounds like our standard UK doors then.  I look forward to googling for info about Dizzy's interesting country, when he tells us where he lives :)

Sorry, you're right. It's 6'8". Of course, this is information I haven't used in over 20 years.  :P

a grid is a x^2 variable, and its size varies dependent on the monitor size one uses and the the max zoom power.. :D

I base my belief on the fact that the tiles are 1.0 mesh units on a side. My previous estimations of sims height, wall height and so on all point to a meter being the proper equivalent. A yard is close, but except for maybe fabric and carpet, no one uses yards as a regular measurement. So I believe the default mesh scale of 1.0 units/meter is what was used. Something had to be standard, because there is no way a whole fleet of artists got everything the proper relative size by comparing each other's work and eyeballing it.

just some old infos

http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost.php?p=466336&postcount=3
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost.php?p=466838&postcount=5
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost.php?p=499973&postcount=8
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost.php?p=699131&postcount=17
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=56704
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=156955

Nil, thanks for the link to the spreadsheet. And just yesterday I printed a floor plan to play with. I'll give it a go this evening and see if it speeds up the process.

I hate building and usually do it free-hand and all my houses end up looking exactly alike.

I've always worked on the basis that a square in The Sims or Sims 2 is 60-80 cm each side. I live in a house that is full of Ikea furniture, which tends to come in multiples of 80 cm widths, and I can make my house easily on that assumption. A standard one-tile bookcase is 80cm wide, and a standard chest of drawers (equivalent to a 2-tile chest of drawers in Sims 2) is a little over a metre. The "loveseat" we have (2 person sofa) is 120cm wide and would occupy 2 squares in Sims 2, while our 3-seater sofa is 160cm wide and would occupy 3 squares. I have to say that I've never seen a 3 seater sofa that's as big as 3m wide!

As Inge said, if each square was 1m, then sim beds would be 2.5m long! We just ordered a new bed, and the standard metric sizes for bed lengths are 190 (approximately 6' 3") and 200cm (approximately 6' 6"). A standard single bed is 90cm wide (3'), though we know the sims must have extra-narrow beds because they seem barely any wider than a single, skinny sim. Also sims' standard doubles are two squares wide - and a standard double bed is a pathetic 140 cm (4' 6")! 

Standard kitchen appliances (fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and cookers) and kitchen units in the UK are 60cm wide. Although Sims 2 uses American-style wider fridges, most of the other appliances seem to be the normal size. These things all occupy a single tile.

Also, if each square was 1m - what of the widescreen TV? That would have a screen of approximately 160cm wide. Except that TVs aren't measured along the bottom edge, but instead along the hypotenuse. Standard widescreen TVs have a ratio of 16:9, and by Pythagoras' Theorem, that would give a width of over 180cm - close to 6 feet! The widest widescreen TV that I've ever seen on the market was 60 inches or 5' wide - and that is a brand new freak of nature item. Even a 48" widescreen TV is insanely big. "Home cinema" widescreen TVs are usually around 40". In contrast, if the squares are 60cm each, that would make the lower edge of the TV no more than 1m, making the quoted width ~115cm or 45" - still enormous, but at least realistic!

And regarding the door argument, standard internal doors in the UK are 78" x 30" at most, external doors are either 1981mm x 838mm or 2032mm x 813mm - making a maximum of 80" x 33" for the door including its frame, with most doors considerably less. I just looked these values up on http://www.diy.com :D.

I base my 1 meter on the sim height and the wall height.
Standard heght for doors in the US is 7 ft, or 84".
I doubt for every article that either of our ideas are correct, and I would bet that many items are not scaled realistically, but rather to fit the whims of the artists.

On this side of the pond, 60" Plasma televisions have been available since 2001, though admittedly, in 2001 you'd have paid through the nose for them. Apparently, if you're willing to go with an off-brand, they're available for under $3,000 now.

Hmm. Running some numbers. The lower-priced basegame flat panel is named the "Soma 44" PancakeTech Television". Base of the screen works out trignometrically to 38 inches, and using the Antiquity Fence by Swift, LTD and boolprop SnapObjectstoGrid false as a ruler, is a little under a 1  1/3 sqaures. Assuming 1 1/3 squares exactly hits a square width of 28.8 inches. Assuming 1 1/4 squares exactly  hits a square width of 30.7 inches.  A useful value based on this would be 30 inches (Roughly 75 cm)to the square, as that's 2 1/2 feet.

This is kind of spoiled by the Trottco 27" TV, whose 4:3-proportion 21.6 inch-wide screen is half a square wide, and  bespeaks a 43-inch (110 cm) square.

As far as I know, those are the only two basegame objects that give a real-world dimension. There's the SwingarmCo 27" TV that debuted with NL, which appears to have a slightly larger screen than the Trottco, and the Lifestories-Converted Plasma 50 Quad Television (50", but appears to be a projection television, rather than the flat-panel plasma it claims to be) Didn't run the numbers on those, as the former is hard to measure accurately, and the latter is only quasi-canon.

Ugh.  I need a break.

When you said "On this side of the pond" I was mentally preparing for a trig problem.  :P

I want to defend my 3ft or 1m values by saying those kitchen units are double units, going by the fact they have double doors, and the beds don't start right at the top of the tile they are on, they are moved down, so they only actually cover the distance of two tiles.  If the tiles were only 60-80cms, the beds would only be 4 or 5ft long.   Also stairways would be too narrow.  The stoves have 6-burner tops, meaning they are at least the 90cm type.  The armchairs are only one tile wide. They would be too narrow to sit in if the tiles were 60-80 cm

Seems we have had this discussion at regular intervals over the last three years, and have settled nothing fro certain.
But I am in agreement with Inge, although that proves nothing. It is a game, after all, and not a CAD program, so I presume the artists (not engineers) took some liberties with measurements when they built the game content.

Talking of CAD programs I would really love it if Sims3 *was* completely realistic in scale.  It would make it so much more interesting to make objects and houses.  Nice if the grid was smaller therefore.

Agreed, 1m is the tile size they measure up to when you import game meshes into milkshape. What matters in game is that objects "look right" i.e. they are in correct proportion to one another and to the sims interacting with them. The bed meshes are approximately 2.5 tiles long which equates to 2.5 metres or 8 feet which isn't too far off the real world bed length of 6 to 7 feet. Single beds are 1 tile or just over 3 feet wide and double beds 2 tiles or just over 6 feet wide, so more like a queen size. That said, the bed footprints occupy 1x3 (single) or 2x3 (double) tiles as objects are placed on the same grid used for building. It's close enough that they look realistic in game. You do have to sacrifice a little bit of reality once you map objects onto a grid and use grid-based object footprints but it's the relative proportions that matter.

You need to take into account the size of the objects to placed in the different rooms when using real world houseplans to build in game. In the real world we can squeeze through small gaps between furniture but sims may need that extra tile otherwise they'll get stuck e.g. the minimum proportions for a double bedroom are 4x4 (or approximately 12x12 feet) allowing sims access to both sides of the bed.

You also need to factor in the fact that sims measure everything in "flards" rather than feet or meters.  ;)

best post! I lol'd for real.  :D

Necromancy rulz!  I am now in a position to declare definitively that one grid square is exactly 3 ft.   The columns that hold up the decks are called "deckSupportNineFoot".  Rooms are 3 tiles high, and the tiles are the same size as the floor tiles.

I could never argue against such an authoritative source.
Still, the little details like the Maya default scale being 1.0 units = 1 Meter make me wonder.

Well it's probably a metre anyway.  The programmers probably said to the modellers "What the heck is a metre?" and the modeller said to the programmer "About three feet".   And so everyone responsible for naming resources from then on called a square three feet.    So I internally regard it as a metre, but not, never, four feet.