Skyrim height units to real world units?

[Wolborg]

I have been searching all over for a formula for converting Skyrim height units to centimeters. All I've found are estimates based on the formulae of earlier TES games. Is Skyrim's height formula a secret or something?

 

I have calculated a sort of average of various sources of information. It would appear that 0.01 SU (Skyrim units) would be about 3 cm (1.00 SU = 175 cm, 1.02 SU = 181 cm).

 

However, https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/3bwhag/elder_scrolls_race_height/ suggests that 0.01 SU would be equal to 1.8 cm (0.90 SU = 160 cm, 1.10 = 196 cm). That doesn't seem right, though. On the screenshots, a 0.05-SU difference looks a lot more than 9 cm.

 

Is that true? Does anyone know the actual formula?

 

[Arthacs]

I dunno the formula, but this mod have unit conversions:

 

Player Size Adjuster and First Person Camera Height Fix 

 

If it's anywhere near correct number I can not say.

[vpoteryaev]

Skyrim Unit    Metric      Imperial
1              1.428 cm    0.5625"
2              2.856 cm    1.125"
4              5.713 cm    2.25"
8              11.43 cm    4.5"
16             22.85 cm    9"
32             45.7 cm     18"
64             91.41 cm    3'
128            1.828 m     6'
256            3.656 m     12'
512            7.312 m     24'
1024           14.62 m     48'
2048           29.25 m     96'
4096           58.5 m      192'

Data from http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Unit

[Wolborg]

Skyrim lentgh units (SLU) and Skyrim height units (SHU) are not one and the same thing. The conversion formula for SLU is available on numerous websites, including, if I remember correctly, Wikipedia.

 

The only source for SHU I have found so far is the mod Player Size Adjuster mentioned in one of the replies above. It lets you choose a height between 0.70 and 1.30 for your character, indicating also the corresponding height in real-world units.

 

Since the conversion of SHU to imperial units is much more precise in the mod than the conversion to metric units (apart from which the latter are incorrectly rounded), I also based my calculations on imperial units, assuming that 1 foot = 12 inches = 30.48 cm. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

It turned out that 0.01 SHU = 1.8288 cm.

 

I stood my player character next to a door and took a number of screenshots with different heights. Then I compared the height of the character in pixels to the height of the door in pixels. It turned out that the linear scale used in the mod is indeed correct.

 

So the formula for converting Skyrim height units into real world units is:

n SHU = (n – 0.7) * 1.8288 *100 + 128.016 cm

m cm = (m – 128.016) / 1.8288 / 100 + 0.7 SHU

 

This makes approximately:

0.70 SHU = 128 cm

0.80 SHU = 146 cm

0.90 SHU = 165 cm

1.00 SHU = 183 cm

1.10 SHU = 201 cm

1.20 SHU = 219 cm

1.30 SHU = 238 cm

 

 

 

 

Player Size Adjuster and First Person Camera Height Fix 

 

 

 

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much.

 

[vpoteryaev]

Wolborg.
So, you think that game engine uses different scaling along z and x, y?
Just create a CUBE-mesh and place in Skyrim world - it will be a cube, not parallelepiped.

Added: If you mean projection, that related only to visual reder (and affect height too), but not to real (Skyrim) dimensions.

 

Kind Regards.

[Wolborg]

OMG. The conversion formula is actually much simpler. 1 SHU = 182.88 cm and that's it. 0 SHU = 0 cm.

 

I thought it was the kind of perverted scale like the one used for measuring weight, where 0 weight is actually not 0 but approximately a quarter less than weight 100. Turned out it wasn't.

 

 

As to SHU not equalling SLU – that is quite obvious, unless you are suggesting that the people in Skyrim are, like, 13–15 mm tall. (According to your data, the correctness of which I don't doubt, 1 SLU = 1.428 cm.)

 

The x and y axes haven't got anything to do with it. When a character with the height of 1.00 SHU lies down, he will still be 182.88 cm long.

 

Try to realize that the units which the Skyrim game uses for measuring a living creature's height (tallness) are different from the units which the Skyrim game uses for measuring dimensions of objects (be it length, width or height) or the distances between the same.

 

If it seems too complicated at first, think of this analogy: if something costs 100 dollars in the USA and 776 dollars in Hong Kong, it doesn't mean that it's more expensive in Hong Kong. The prices are equal, simply the US dollar is not the same as the Hong Kong dollar.

 

(I now see that I should have named the other unit SDU – Skyrim distance unit. Then it would not have confused you into thinking that I somehow thought that horizontal and vertical distances are measured differently. BTW, do those measurement units have official names? I haven't seen any, that's why I invented my own.)