Well since I have ths far only been guessing at stuff I thought I would isolate each query I have in my own head and see if I could answer them one at a time - but this one is confusing me:
If the realworld value of gravity is -9.81 and this is also Unitiy’s default gravity value, then why doesn’t the prefab FPS act like it has the weight and physics characterisitics of a realworld person in realworld gravity? At the moment if I drag a standard prefab fps into the scene it moves and jumps like it is on the moon or under water. Given that this is the case, I would expect not to have to touch the default gravity and instead change the prefab FPS settings to make it so, but it seems that at the moment the closest I get to something that feels more real is increasing gravity’s setting to something like -100. Where am I going wrong?
Thank you
Boxy
This is usually an issue of scale.
The default player prefab as someone reported is 4 meter large instead of 2.
The rigidbody documentation contains some info about why scale is so important. More so than mass.
That said we are working on providing a first person controller which feels like a Quake 3 like fps controller for Unity 1.2.
(All movement is carried out immediate, with no acceleration/deceleration)
Another thing worth pointing out is that even with real sizes / real gravity, things have a tendency to feel too soft.
I usually prefer a gravity of about -12 for making the game feel real
Cool, that makes a lot of sense 
and thanks for the extra tip Nicholas.
So lesson number 1 is make sure I know what relevant things to read before posting the question
I’m looking forward to the Quake3 controller but curious as to where the differences will be. Will that just be a case of tweaking the physics setting?
Thanks
Boxy
Ping!
That is feeling much better, it seems to have solved some redraw problems too and (fingers crossed - so far) that thing where my player sometimes randomly falls through the terrain mesh. The next issue is that there appears to be a difference between 2m in C4D and 2m in Unity but I haven’t look into this properly yet…
I wonder if eventually Unity will be able to specifiy whether the imported fbx/whatever is coming from Maya, C4D, Lightwave etc and adjust size to match accordingly?
Thanks
Boxy
You can set a scale factor in the import settings for the fbx file.
oh why is it all so much simpler than I think it is :s
Thanks
Boxy
You are not alone - 1 cm in Maya imports as 1m in Unity, though most never notice
Richard.