How green is my …

…so we are going to embed resources and activities about atmospheric science, and green house gas emissions, naturally I thought the most logical place to do this was inside a greenhouse.

Greenhouse Front Door

Greenhouse Front Door

I had a plateau set aside for this building, nestled nicely in the southern ranges on SciPrime. Rather than just build a rectangular thing, I decided on a few protuberances and sexy roof line, and I used a primitive texture (the default build texture as it happens is sort of greeny griddy stuff) with some transparency masking to give the illusion of reinforced glass panels (well, it looks like that to me at least).

Open Sesame...

Open Sesame...

I remembered a scripting trick that let me do nice rusting (the sciprime predominant theme is rust, just in case you are wondering) sliding doors – you click one, they both open because you tell each of them about each other.  After lab-rat testing with some in-world cybernauts, it appears they need to stay open for about 10 seconds before automatically shutting – that seems to work as a reasonable time to get through for even noobs.

I found the sound that was used for the original star trek door opening (a sic-fi woosh) and that is the sound made as the doors slide open (well, I thought it was cute at least).

some greenery

some greenery

I have not yet kitted out the interior as I am still awaiting the content from our science curriculum expert, but thought some irrigation/humidity would be a nice touch, so found some “rain” that moves, and a few cycads and ferns to give a primordial tropical feel – have yet to add garden beds, organic matter etc. but we will subdivide this space into a few project/display rooms.

You _may_ be able to see the tanks and pipes – completest me has devised a water and nutrient recyc system, tank farm and engine plant – I do not think the extra effort is wasted, I aim for reasonable (or at least partly believable architecture)

back door, plant, water and nutrient recyc

back door, plant, water and nutrient recyc

So we now have an upper terrace occupied by the atmospheric research centre, the terrace below will house the “Collaboratory”, the terrace below that will house the soon-to-be-relocated non-eco school. Underground this mountain range here is the science bunker, so we are beginning to get a science-themed compound.  Quite happy with the progress – amazing what can be done in the wee hours of the night.