I have had the good fortune of creating a place in SL that is meant to be fashioned after a specific region of the world, but not to recreate a specific place exactly. I worked with two builders, Golda Stein and SamBivalent Spork, and a scripter, Candide LeMay, to fashion a diving site with Caribbean flora and fauna with a small strip of a kelp forest from the California Pacific region. Divers Alert Network, a nonprofit group working to educate divers and medical professionals, commissioned the island. Various diving sites were created to simulate what a diver can encounter in the real waters.

Main building on DAN Island

The first stop on your visit is to get diving gear and other goodies from the large building on the island. The gear is sized to give a safer fit, and available for male and female avatars. All items are free. The attachments of the diving gear are scripted for color changes. Instructions are included. The diving animation override (AO) is scripted for a realistic experience, and is a HUD attachment so it can be used with or without the rest of the diving gear. It will start working as you walk into the water, and will work in any Linden water. The swimming animations were tweaked to be as close to real as possible. The AO will slow you down. This is not lag! The normal speed in SL can make you travel great distances in a short amount of time. If you use that speed in the waters, you’re going to miss a lot. Enjoy the slower speed of moving through the water and look for the different flora and fauna placed for you to experience.

Barrier coral reef

A barrier reef just below the surface of the water is alive with corals and fish native to the Caribbean. Careful research preceded the build, as we were required to be as scientifically accurate as possible. Fish and corals are placed at appropriate sea levels. If you dive deep enough, you’ll notice a sudden stop in the corals. Corals need warmer waters to survive and do not live below a certain depth.

The mangrove trees shelter a mother manatee and her baby, along with a fish nursery. The brackish waters of a mangrove are perfect for babies to grow to maturity before heading into the more dangerous waters of the open sea. Our fish nursery houses baby barracudas.

Sunken ship, housing corals and fish.

An old pirate’s ship sank in the northeast and became a home for corals and fish. The gray reef sharks are on patrol overhead. Sharks may seem frightening and dangerous, but they find the taste of humans to be nasty. Research is scarce on their thoughts on merfolk, however.

Cave entrance

An extensive cave houses many fish and resting sharks. Sharks will often rest on the floors of cave. Royal grammas have a peculiar habit of swimming upside down in caves. They orient themselves to the top of the cave, making the observer think the fish are upside down. A cave reel is available in the building with the other freebies. It is scripted to work with the diving system in the cave. Look for red and yellow arrows that create possible paths to take in the cave. One path will go down deep. The other goes through the rest of the cave. The reels make good accessories off the island, but only work in the cave on the DAN island.

Kelp forest at DAN, an Orca in the distance.

A strip of kelp forest from the California Pacific region houses orca, sunfish, and more. Kelp only anchors in rock, so land had to be supplemented with mega prims to keep the sand at bay.

Lighthouse anchoring the main island

On land, there are two different lighthouses. The tallest is on the larger of the two islands, and it is modeled after one in Wisconsin, USA. While it isn’t technically from the Caribbean, its style still fits. On the black volcanic rock island, a smaller lighthouse holds information that travelers might find helpful while on vacation in other regions of the world. The main building on the large island houses information for divers as well as two rooms set up for conferences, meetings, and classes. Their positions are designed to make sure that text chat from one conference room is not seen in the other room. They also are set up to support their own media streams without interference from other parcels.

The lessons learned on his project are too numerous to mention here. Designing a space to look spectacular without causing adverse lag to visitors is not as easy as it might seem at first. The number of things to consider is vast, and all decisions are weighed carefully. Textures, scripts, and numbers of prims used all contribute to the experience. That awful word: balance.

Interested now?  Visit DAN!

I start this blog with the intent of focusing on the world of Second Life, created by Linden Labs.  I’ve been involved with this world since May ’05. I’m not among the oldest there, of course, but finding that I am getting old. I’ve seen much change and growth over these years. And a lot of that growth is mine. New skills, improved behaviors.

So much I could speak about! But I also have to get some products set out to sell, clean up a sandbox, and make sure that the sharks haven’t eaten more than their share of the fish population.