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The dimensions of the initial particle cloud should be dependent on the covariance of the initial pose estimate. Rviz won't let you change that value, but you should be able to publish it manually and try out different values for the covariance matrix until you get the initial spread you want. For example code of publishing the initial pose estimate programmatically, se https://github.com/cwru-robotics/cwru-ros-pkg/blob/master/cwru_tour_guide/tour_guide_executive/src/initial_pose_setup.py .