Activities
Metal detecting
A man working a metal detector along the sand in front of a lifeguard tower, in one of the official beach screenshots.
He stands with the control box in one hand and the shaft angled down, the black elliptical coil just clear of the sand. He is heavyset and sunburnt, in blue swim shorts and strap sandals with a heel strap, with bright green sunglasses and dark over-ear headphones — which is how a detector is actually worked.
Behind him a yellow timber lifeguard tower stands on stilts, a lifeguard in a yellow top and red shorts on its deck with binoculars up. A sign on the fascia carries a white cross on a red square at each end; the word between them does not come apart. A woman in a pink cap jogs past at the right.
On the deck behind the rail stand a blue-and-white cool box and a white plastic chair, and a red towel with white stripes hangs over the rail at the left. Underneath, the stilts and beams are painted orange-red, and between them, past two pale poles crossed in an X, two people on bicycles are behind the beach.
Rockstar files the screenshot under Places/Vice City, and the rest of the beach in it is on the Vice City page; the red-and-black quad under the tower has a page of its own. Lifeguard towers on the sand were already part of Vespucci Beach in Grand Theft Auto V.
Whether any of it is yours to do is the open question. A detector on a beach suggests something buried to find; the screenshot itself shows a man on a beach with one, and no more than that.
How to recognise it
- A metal detector worked at arm's length, coil just clear of the sand
- Dark over-ear headphones and bright green sunglasses
- Blue swim shorts and strap sandals
- A yellow timber lifeguard tower on stilts behind him
- A lifeguard on its deck with binoculars up
The frame it comes from
The frame is a still from the official Press pack, which carries no timecode. It is 3840 by 2160, and the subject occupies 1152 by 1274 of it. Also in it: Vice City and a lifeguard quad.
How this was measured
| Source | Press pack |
|---|---|
| Frame | 3840 × 2160 |
| Crop | 1152 × 1274 — a good part of the frame |
| Image check | 26 September 2026 — checked |
| Text check | 27 September 2026 — 36 claims read against the image, 3 corrected |
| Read at | the true pixel grid, 1:1 |
| Lettering | Letter height | Contrast | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| the sign on the tower fascia | 10 px | — | no |
These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work
What we still do not know
- Whether the player can use a detector
- Whether there is anything buried to find
- Whether it connects to a collectible system
- What the sign on the tower fascia says
