Revision 5

Aviaries let Planet Zoo 2 house fully flying birds for the first time in the series. Rather than being confined to the ground, birds move freely through large enclosed spaces and can be watched both perching below and soaring above. Frontier calls flying birds one of the sequel's biggest technical leaps and some of the most complex assets the studio has produced.

Building an Aviary

An aviary starts as an ordinary habitat. Once a valid perimeter of barriers and a gate are in place, the roof tool generates a cover attached to the barrier posts, with optional roof pillars supporting it across wider spans. A roof curve setting controls how much the cover sags or arches, so the same footprint can read as a taut mesh dome or a slack net. The result is escape-proof air space that keeps both the birds and the guests safe.

The roofs are not limited to birds. Frontier points out that the same covers work on any habitat and are a useful tool for climbing animals or anything else with a talent for getting out.

Space and Furnishing

Every flying animal has a flyable area requirement, the aerial equivalent of the preferred water depth that aquatic species have in aquariums. Size the enclosure short and the birds will not have room to stretch their wings. Beyond raw volume, an aviary needs plenty to perch on, enrichment items, feeders, and nests if the birds are to breed.

Because birds spend so much of their time in the air or high in the trees, guests usually have to look up to see them. Frontier expects elevated walkways, both inside and outside aviaries, to become a common sight in players' zoos as a result.

Flight and Behaviour

Flying birds run on the same decision-making framework as every other animal, described under Animals and Welfare, but they draw on a different pool of behaviours. Flight itself is tuned per species rather than shared.

Frontier's own example of the range involved is an eagle soaring over a canyon against a Great Hornbill threading through a rainforest canopy: the same systems, tuned to very different birds.

Nesting

Aviaries brought nesting into the series. Flying birds, flightless birds, and reptilian egg-layers all need an appropriate nesting site per breeding pair before they can conceive, and a pair must claim a nest before any eggs appear. Incubation is handled by the male, the female, or both depending on the species; reptiles instead leave their eggs to incubate alone, though some mothers guard the nest.

Hatchlings differ by group. Reptiles and flightless birds emerge free to explore, but flying birds are nestbound at first and stay under their parents' care. At fledging age they trade their shaggy juvenile plumage for adult feathers, and they remain juveniles that do not count against a habitat's adult population limit until they reach sexual maturity.

How the Birds Were Built

Frontier built a bespoke pipeline for its avians around paired open and closed wing meshes that animators can swap between as a bird moves. Each wing is sculpted attached to a symmetrical body, optimised, then split and mirrored so the open and closed versions line up like interlocking pieces and the swap stays invisible in play.

The feathers are layered by hand from bespoke feather cards, hand-painted textures, and a custom fur shader, sometimes running to hundreds of cards on a single bird. A wing is assembled from a mesh forming its bulk, individually animated flight feathers slotted into it, and tertiary feathers layered above and below to blend the two. Some species add capelets over the upper body and wing to stand in for back feathers, and pockets over the chest and lower wing so a closed wing can tuck into a fold of feathers the way a real bird's does.

Confirmed Birds

The White-Tailed Eagle and the Great Hornbill have both been shown in official gameplay footage and named by the development team, but neither has a catalogue entry yet. Purchase details for the Deluxe birds are covered under Editions and Pre-Orders.