Animals I Think Would Be a Good Addition & Why - Aviary

[KimoKat]

I'll be trying to do one of these every day or so as well as respond to any comments or suggestions made. Please be respectful as these are just my opinions and thoughts on good additions to the game. With that being said, hopefully you enjoy the read and hopefully Frontier considers this.
Aviary DLC
Now, like with how a good amount of mechanics/items were added for the new Aquatic DLC, definitely new mechanics would be needed for this. Specifically the best course of action I see with this is making it similar to exhibit animals, rather than habitat animals (I know that's probably an unpopular opinion but realistically speaking for this to work without loads of issues and birds escaping without reason, this would likely be the strongest course, leave habitat animals to flightless birds.). My suggestion is new structures, coming in 2-3 different sizes, Small Aviary, Medium Aviary, and Large Aviary the sizes would be for different species like for example a pair of eagles would only be place able in a Large Aviary. Also depending on the species in the aviary, the environment in the aviary would change. So similar to Exhibits they would be none mixable (unless Frontier decides to make the a feature for aviaries). Now, however I would much prefer to see birds in the animal market, rather than a exhibit market, as the animal market is multiplayer, while the exhibit market is not, but that's just wishing. With the explanation of that out of the way, on to some birds I think would fit well for this along with possible aviary sizes that would fit to em.

-Hyacinth Macaws (Jungle Theme, Medium Aviary)
Hyacinth Macaws are vulnerable parrot that is native to South America, beautiful but often caught and illegally sold as pets or killed and plucked for their feathers.
-Philippine Eagles (Forest Theme, Large Aviary)
Philippine Eagles are an endangered species of eagle, native to the Philippine forests where they hunt monkeys and keep their populations in check.
- Araripe Manakins (Jungle Theme, Small Aviary)
Araripe Manakins, a critically endangered small bird belonging to the manakin family. Beautiful and sadly underrated, not many people know of this small bird, making it's addition to the game a strong way to raise awareness.
-Piping Plover (Beach Theme, Small Aviary)
A near threatened North American species, a very small, and unquestionably adorable little bird, no question would be unique as an aviary animal.
- Forest Owlet (Forest Theme, Medium Aviary)
An Indian owl, marked now as endangered due to deforestation of their natural habitats, another bird not well known.

These are some main species I think would make a strong impact, however here are some honorable mentions.

• Regent Honeyeater (Critically Endangered Australian Bird)
• Kirtland's Warbler (Near Threatened North American Bird)
• Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (Critically Endangered North American Bird)
• Lear's Macaw (Endangered South American Parrot)
• Blue-Throated Macaw (Endangered South American Parrot)
• African Grey Parrot (Threatened African Parrot)
• Galapagos Hawk (Vulnerable Galapagos Hawk)
• Madagascan Fish Eagle (Critically Endangered Madagascar Eagle)
• Red Owl (Vulnerable Madagascar Owl)

 

[leguminous media]

I don't know, I did a walkthrough aviary and it contained the peafowl, so perhaps it would work with fully flighted large flying birds? I think their would need to be a huge collision margin for error so a slight gap doesn't let the eagles fly away.

 

[NZFanatic]

I used to advocate for something similar in terms of aviaries-as-exhibits, but since the Aquatic Pack dropped I've come around to the idea that Frontier can probably make something else work.

In theory flying mechanics shouldn't need to be too different to diving mechanics - still restricted by a 3D space. The main issue would be the same issue that we already have for all other modes of movement in the game - clipping and hitboxes. In the case of birds, however, I can sort of imagine a scenario where it isn't so much "free-flying" as it is "point-to-point" flying. That is to say, rather than the birds flying around all the time for no real reason, their flight paths would be determined by where in the habitat they can land. The purpose of flight would be to get from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on, where they would interact with feeders, enrichment, and other animals. What specifically determines a perch could be something in-built into already existing scenery (such as whether it is already climbable) or it could be through some kind of marker we can place manually.

As for the aviaries themselves, it's hard to imagine. If we look at the minimum depth requirement for diving in the game (4m) we know that there's some kind of limitation which does not allow for this to be shallower, which leads to some pretty unrealistic takes (otters, even giant otters, certainly do not need that much depth). So this might also be a limitation with aviaries, where we end up having to build some pretty enormous structures to contain birds that would otherwise be fine in something much smaller in real-life.

How exactly would aviary construction work? I don't know. I've heard it theorised that it will involve manipulating habitat barriers along the XYZ axis to fold them up into roofs and points, but I can't even picture how that would look. I doubt it would involve modular building pieces, because that doesn't fit in with any other aspect of habitat construction in the game so far (except where the Null Barrier is used in conjunction - in other words building pieces can't be used to make a habitat by themselves). I did have the idea of making something like a 'click and drag' aviary, where you can choose a variety of shapes (or I guess, circular or rectangular) and stretch it from a starting point out into whatever shape you want. This is probably the most sensible way of doing it, because not only would it prevent uniformity, it would also imply that this new type of habitat could be used for other animals in the game, and it would allow for birds to be habitat animals that could then be mixed with other species (I'd love, for example, to have macaws sharing a habitat with tapir).

 

[PnGLINNyo]

I used to advocate for something similar in terms of aviaries-as-exhibits, but since the Aquatic Pack dropped I've come around to the idea that Frontier can probably make something else work.

In theory flying mechanics shouldn't need to be too different to diving mechanics - still restricted by a 3D space. The main issue would be the same issue that we already have for all other modes of movement in the game - clipping and hitboxes. In the case of birds, however, I can sort of imagine a scenario where it isn't so much "free-flying" as it is "point-to-point" flying. That is to say, rather than the birds flying around all the time for no real reason, their flight paths would be determined by where in the habitat they can land. The purpose of flight would be to get from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on, where they would interact with feeders, enrichment, and other animals. What specifically determines a perch could be something in-built into already existing scenery (such as whether it is already climbable) or it could be through some kind of marker we can place manually.

As for the aviaries themselves, it's hard to imagine. If we look at the minimum depth requirement for diving in the game (4m) we know that there's some kind of limitation which does not allow for this to be shallower, which leads to some pretty unrealistic takes (otters, even giant otters, certainly do not need that much depth). So this might also be a limitation with aviaries, where we end up having to build some pretty enormous structures to contain birds that would otherwise be fine in something much smaller in real-life.

How exactly would aviary construction work? I don't know. I've heard it theorised that it will involve manipulating habitat barriers along the XYZ axis to fold them up into roofs and points, but I can't even picture how that would look. I doubt it would involve modular building pieces, because that doesn't fit in with any other aspect of habitat construction in the game so far (except where the Null Barrier is used in conjunction - in other words building pieces can't be used to make a habitat by themselves). I did have the idea of making something like a 'click and drag' aviary, where you can choose a variety of shapes (or I guess, circular or rectangular) and stretch it from a starting point out into whatever shape you want. This is probably the most sensible way of doing it, because not only would it prevent uniformity, it would also imply that this new type of habitat could be used for other animals in the game, and it would allow for birds to be habitat animals that could then be mixed with other species (I'd love, for example, to have macaws sharing a habitat with tapir).

I always like the way you think, and yes aviaries should be a new mode amongst the Barriers tab- i.e. considered as a habitat since the existence of walkthrough aviaries are of high education value, works by greater welfare as well as being (pardon my description) "valuable assets" for a zoo.
To add my personal opinion on development aspects, I think the main challenge for them would be adjusting the required space for smaller birds such as Bali starlings and sort, because the entity size would clearly be as small as an exhibit animal; unless a monotonous animation is rigged in much like exhibits too. (pardon me again if it has already covered in what you've said)

 

[NZFanatic]

I always like the way you think, and yes aviaries should be a new mode amongst the Barriers tab- i.e. considered as a habitat since the existence of walkthrough aviaries are of high education value, works by greater welfare as well as being (pardon my description) "valuable assets" for a zoo.
To add my personal opinion on development aspects, I think the main challenge for them would be adjusting the required space for smaller birds such as Bali starlings and sort, because the entity size would clearly be as small as an exhibit animal; unless a monotonous animation is rigged in much like exhibits too. (pardon me again if it has already covered in what you've said)

Personally I'm working under the assumption that smaller birds like the Bali starling are out of the question (even if they are highly endangered/protected), but we'll see what Frontier comes up with. Maybe they'll develop an "exhibit-style-aviary" in conjunction with big habitat aviaries for smaller birds or something like that. Of course, it's all theory anyway. I'm sure that whatever they do will still be good.

 

[jcp011c]

I'm fine with some birds being in exhibit like aviaries, as opposed to habitats, rather than not getting them at all. Of course, the more they can make into habitat type animals the better. I'd love to see some variety of sizes of some exhibits with that.

 

[the cawckiest king]

In theory flying mechanics shouldn't need to be too different to diving mechanics - still restricted by a 3D space. The main issue would be the same issue that we already have for all other modes of movement in the game - clipping and hitboxes. In the case of birds, however, I can sort of imagine a scenario where it isn't so much "free-flying" as it is "point-to-point" flying. That is to say, rather than the birds flying around all the time for no real reason, their flight paths would be determined by where in the habitat they can land. The purpose of flight would be to get from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on, where they would interact with feeders, enrichment, and other animals. What specifically determines a perch could be something in-built into already existing scenery (such as whether it is already climbable) or it could be through some kind of marker we can place manually.

I actually came to the forums just to nose around what people were saying about the possibility of aviaries being added to the game because my zoos just feel so terribly incomplete without them, so I'm glad I found this thread :^)

Something like perches similar to climbing structures could definitely work to remedy the problem of birds being able to simply free-fly away. Either creating perches that birds can automatically fly to, from the ground or from perch-to-perch, as some form of Enrichment Item, or providing some manner that we can manually set/link perches for birds to move around on.

Alternatively, Frontier could possibly give us new habitat tools where we designate "flyable" spaces, something similar to Null barriers, where we can see it in edit mode but it becomes invisible outside of that. A few simple shapes such as resizable cubes should suffice with parameters limiting birds to those flyable spaces, and for anything that perhaps has multiple angles or isn't a perfect cube, we can set multiple spaces and link them together in a group the same way as we link objects already, and it will be counted as the same space.

I think I like the flyable spaces option better, because it gives us a bit more freedom to work with, where we can choose between creating closed habitats (aviaries), BUT we could potentially also have open-sky areas with bird handlers/educators, such as you already see in some real life zoos where they put on special shows. We just got Educator staff added with the Aquatic Pack, who are able to throw food into a habitat during their speeches. Maybe if they add flying birds, their special interaction can be having a bird fly down from a perch and land on their arm instead? That'd be super cool imo.

Parrots and other tropical birds are an obvious go-to choice, but personally I'd rather see some raptors, owls, vultures/condors, and corvids (specifically crows/ravens/magpies/jackdaws). I'd especially love to see the corvid/crow-family added, but its far less likely to make the cut than a lot of the other bird species I've seen people tossing up as candidates (I guess that's what reskin mods are for though).

The one thing I think that an Aviary pack could have going for it at least is that the models and animations could be easily re-skinned for more variety (such as multiple species of parrots) -- as opposed to past packs that added lots of animals completely unique from each other in every way -- so that an aviary DLC wouldn't have such an underwhelming number of new animals, but I guess we'll see what they do if we ever get it.