If you mean adding features which require the user to actually maintain the tank, as they would with a real one, then yes I have considered it. This would be an optional mode for educational purposes, in which you must feed the fish, keep the right PH balance, fight diseases, and a hundred other things necessary to keep the fish alive.
Nope, not what I meant.
If, on the other hand, you mean simulating a real reef instead of a tank, then there's no way. I walk a razor-edge between what's possible and what would take a hundred years to accomplish. Only by limiting my target environment to something roughly the size of a monitor can I achieve realism that could fool someone into thinking it's real.
Actually, I was wondering why you hadn't created somerthing in between that and the current SSA background, but not to such an extreme as you've described, just a bit more depth and realism. In fact, Morgan's translation of my comments isn't too far off base.
However, that being said, hasn't SimAquarium managed to do this with their recent release of version 2? Their new background does a fairly decent job of mimicking a tide pool alcove without going too far out into the distance and uses coral for the barriers. My only complaint being the back wall rock texture, but that's about it. Do you consider their app as being "crap" as you put it?
allowing the camera to travel in the Z-direction would increase the work involved by at least an order of magnitude.
Personally, I wouldn't want the camera to move in the Z-direction, what you currently have planned for the 3D background is ideal.
Anyway, SimAquarium aside, thanks for letting us pick your brain.
I thought it would be interesting to hear what ideas you had considered and tossed around prior to going with the SSA as we know it.