Q:

Is there a rule of thumb to scale up the environment by 33%?

I was reading an article on Gamasutra called A Rational Approach to Racing Game Track Design, and I found the following:

A commonly acknowledged rule for third person games is
  that the environment should be scaled up by a factor of
  around 33 percent (on page 2)

I am just curious: has anyone else heard of such a rule, and if so, where else could I find references to it?

A:

In cinema, photography and game design, it's fairly common-held knowledge that certain type of perspective and movement can cause objects to seem out of scale with each other, or simply to receive less attention from the viewer.
The solution to such a problem is to play with scale empirically until things "look right". I've not heard of an exact formula or precise set of numbers for it.
So to answer your questions, playing with scale to make set compositions look better or to alter the audience's visual attention is a well known trick. The 33% stipulation is just something this guy picked up which works for a particular scenario.
I agree with Patrick Hughes though, if you're not sure if it will work with you, try it yourself. Just don't be afraid to try values other than 33%

A:

Build a mock up and run through your environment just to see what it feels like.  Build several tests, try them all.  You can't blindly use rules from someone else when it comes to making YOUR game feel good, there is only testing with players and iteration.  You could use someone else's rule of thumb to build one of your tests, of course.
Maybe later, based on tests for your game, this percentage will become one of your ruies.
Don't jump the gun with rules of thumb!  (and don't mix metaphors, ahem)

A:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/expanding-horizons-dark-sector/29795
I remerber hearing about this before. Check minute 1:50 (Things next to you need to be 1:1 scale and as things become further away the need to be scaled up).The guy also mentions that the developers of max payne also talked about this issue maybe you could look that up.
Of course they are talking about third person shooters I don't know if this correspond your issue.

