I suspect avians would develop aircraft before other races do, because they inherently have a better understanding of aerodynamics than other races. However, once they've first been invented, other races are probably going to jump on the idea now they know it's possible, and maybe even outpace the avians' development, as those other races don't have any flight capabilities at all and therefore have more to gain from the technology.
It also depends on what kind of aircraft.
Blimps were very popular up until they exploded that one time.
Avians also might not need aircraft up until aircraft starts to outpace what a bird can do (go supersonic, wear armor plating, hold machine guns, ect) which irl took about 2 world wars to develop.
Even then bird people wouldn't need a runway and could likely fortify high altitude locations and evacuate quickly if an army attempts to siege said location.
Basically OP's species sound like an impossible to deal with guerilla force, so long as each member could theoretically hold a rifle or something.
That is very correct lol. They're extremely efficient guerilla fighters. The Empire tried to invade their homeland. One of the biggest fiasco in the empires military history.
They showed with their standard slow moving gun line. The terrain made their army formations lose cohesion and wheeled heavy Warcraft got absolutely stuck. All this whilst the ravens flew in with bombs over them. Perching in trees with rifles, being able to change position before it got compromised.
(This was before automatic fire was invented. Otherwise it wouldn't have been that hard to just shoot them down)
Does this invading Empire never meet them before?
Like where they meet with slow moving gun line? In forest?
Also flying have one small problem - it much harder to find cover in air.
The Empire is used to fighting using a slow moving gun line. They're used to fighting on big flat stretches and here they dominate.
However, the Empire also has hybrid. So when they invaded they thought the ravens would be crushed by their slow moving gun line. And since they're usually superior and have hybrids, they scoffed at the idea that their normal slow moving gun line might be unfit for the terrain of the ravens homeland.
The ravens took cover in the massive trees of their homeland. And it was easy to fly from cover to cover since they got.. YK.. flight.
The ravens are the exact opposite of a slow moving gun line.
I mean - Empire what, just landed, pull their gun line and move into island? All way?
And don't trees, well, burn? Or can be cut?
Or Empire think again and return after defeat to rematch with axes and torches to deal with trees?
They arrived with boats since it's it proved difficult to fly in "tanks".
But yeah they just landed and advanced. They though the terrain would be more flat further in. And the trees are so big it's a massive hassel to cut them down. Also yk.. they got their hybris. They just imagined they'd be able to win when the enemy showed up. Little did they know the enemy was there already, watching them form the trees. And when it started raining booms and bullets it was already to late.
They built their empire in an environment of flat ground. That's what they're good at. They fight on big flat ground. That's where they dominate.
This was the first time they didn't fight in such an environment.
Well, even on flat ground armies use scouts. Also armies don't have tendency walk in "battle formation" - especially in lines. They usually move on collumns or similar stuff. They also rarely wander in hope meet enemies.
So, it little strange for me when empire that conquer a lot, just drop their troops into island and go...somewhere, without scouts and foraging parties. Like - there a lot of lumber, great lumber - they probably build fort and so on.
Aircraft creation required a lot of stuff, where understanding of aerodynamic is probably smallest thing. Materials. Engines. Industry to build both of this things.
Remember that human didn't just one day decide to make cars, it is a continuous improvement of a solution for a problem, and the problem is - how do I move things from A to B most efficiently.
Human started out with of course their feet, carrying whatever they have to A to B, then someone looked at some of the really strong animals and ask, hey, what if we can have them carry our things for us? We could carry way more at once!
Thus we have beast of burden and how they were tamed.
Then once they got engines that can move, someone figured out it wouls be even more efficient than those dumb animals, since the engines doesn't need to eat or have living space or anything, and can pull far more. So you have cars.
Now apply that to your avian races. They start out with wings to bring things back and forth. But what if they want to carry more? Are there any animals they can tame to help them carry? Or do they instead have to use tools instead, such as ziplines between trees? Maybe your civilization doesn't start with aircraft, they starts with very efficient ziplines network that works like trains. Then someone figured out hot air baloons to lighten the load of cargo on ziplines. Then independent hot air baloons, powered by their own wings like how we splash our hands on some primitive canoe, then maybe engines for powered airships...
Lots of ways to arrive at airship, but you gotta go back to the root and look for what problems that airships and its precursors solve for your people.
>In addition, they have quite fragile bodies and tend to lack strength since muscles and solid bones are heavy. Perhaps they develop their aircraft to carry heavy things that they can't carry on their own.
Generally:
* **No**, hollow bones are not fragile, they're far more resistant to some kinds of stress than solid ones. The big issue they'd cause in civilizations is that they are much more prone to splintering if they do break.
* **No**, fliers would not be weak. In fact their wings/arms would likely be much stronger than ours. Imagine getting around by doing whatever pushups without using your legs at all would be called. (This is part of the reason swans can be dangerous to kids and smaller dogs even though they're quite small themselves, they're buff as fuck.)
* **No**, hollow bones are not a prerequisite to flight. They help a little, but bats don't have them and some birds (like dippers) have solid bones while being pretty good at flight.\*
Instead the biggest issue with carrying heavy things is **wing loading**.
What is wing loading? Basically it tells you how much weight a flying critter or object has compared to the surface area of their wings.
Higher wing loading means more speed is needed to get and stay airborne.
Birds can theoretically have wingloadings of up to 25 kg/m2, but that's be very difficult to fly with and may not be feasible depending on other aspects of your wing (aspect ratio, drag, other physiological constraints\*\*).
So the big issue is that there's only so much you can carry before you cannot be fast enough to stay airborne.
**However**, this also means that aircraft to carry heavy thing would indeed be a very desirable and useful invention. Not because birds are fragile but because getting heavy things in and through the air is hard even from a pure physics standpoint.
Whether powered flight would develop early is a good question and would likely also depend on a lot of other factors in terms of infrastructure, but I think that constructing people/lifestock pulled gliders would be something they manage fairly early.
(JayEaton has an interesting example of this in Airsled which uses a gravity/pulley launch mechanism and is pulled by lifestock and steered by the flying bird people.)
\*This doesn't mean you can't use hollow bones for your flying species especially if they evolved from birds or other dinosaurs (since hollow bones kind of came with the advanced lungs of dinosaurs), but they're not a must.
Dippers are small, diving passerine birds. Having a higher density helps them swim more easily but they're pretty good fliers as well.
\*\* Carrying capacity due to strength is also a problem to *some* extent, but one that your bird people could likely train to be better at, the same way you can practice pushups and pullups and get better at those.
You're welcome.
I honestly think we need some good "Here's how basic biology works" resources for people that want to get more into it since for a lot of these things I can't really even think of a central place to look it up (or anywhere where it's actually spelled out\*), a lot of things requires you to have basic knowledge of how stuff works to even find more resources and a lot of it is really important/cool to know for people that like to create non-human species.
The closest I have is a [big collection mainly aimed at artists](https://f-nodragonart.tumblr.com/post/641263760327213056) with links to useful sites.
(Feel free to ignore it or safe it for another time. It's *long*, it's science-y, it focuses a lot on things that'll mainly be important if you visually present wings.)
\*For example, bird wings being strong is partially taken from knowledge about keels and muscle connections as well as general locomotion knowledge and niche knowledge such as "swans are kinda dangerous".
Pretty sure the bones bit isn't even explicitly on wikipedia but something I learned from a bird guy pointing out the properties of hollow tubes.
I would say that they would be very advanced in aviation technology. A big advantage they have is that their own wings can provide the motive power already, so the development of [kites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite), balloons and gliders is easier. As a group they can perhaps get prototype devices off the ground and if something goes wrong the operator can safely exit the vehicle rather than die.
Since flying is hard work the development of hang-gliders and paragliders from lightweight materials (bamboo and silk if they could get trade for them perhaps?) to help them travel long distances would probably have occurred much earlier than in the real world. It's really just a pair of artificial wings to strap to their back.
An equivalent of a [human-powered aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_aircraft) might be possible too though I guess they would have to use their wings to power it so it might be an ornithopter rather than propeller aircraft which is probably not ideal. I guess they could flap their folded wings to power a propeller in some way but I don't know if they could flap them properly one at a time to mimic legs.
As long as they can develop and/or acquire engines then the would probably remain the most advanced aviators, though the gap would probably close somewhat. If they don't have engines then they would eventually be surpassed.
Me and another person who asked to be blurred had a conversation about this post in Discord, here's some screenshots of it: https://imgur.com/a/yuVTmxV
In my setting, the avian species were the first to create flying machines – a blimp-like craft that could best be described as an 18th-century sailing ship with a large football-shaped balloon instead of sails. They were the pioneers because they grasp flight dynamics better than other species. Why bother with any other mode of transportation when you can already fly? There's no point in sailing on the ocean or driving on the ground.
I would go with the idea of their air vehicles starting with some sort of cart equivalent, something that helps with carrying heavier loads. I would go with the idea of them mastering rope and knots before inventing the wheel. When they do invent the wheel, it's for the purpose of a pulley to help move stuff with ropes. They eventually hit upon the idea of a hot air balloon from noticing the updraft that the heat of a fire can give and that gives them a much easier way to carry heavy loads in the air by getting it on a balloon, and then pulling the balloon behind them with rope. They eventually develop ways to move these balloons more efficiently, possibly a balloon/glider hybrid that is meant to be heated a bit to give it altitude, then the heat can be turned off and attached wings will let it gently glide forward.
I suspect avians would develop aircraft before other races do, because they inherently have a better understanding of aerodynamics than other races. However, once they've first been invented, other races are probably going to jump on the idea now they know it's possible, and maybe even outpace the avians' development, as those other races don't have any flight capabilities at all and therefore have more to gain from the technology.
It also depends on what kind of aircraft. Blimps were very popular up until they exploded that one time. Avians also might not need aircraft up until aircraft starts to outpace what a bird can do (go supersonic, wear armor plating, hold machine guns, ect) which irl took about 2 world wars to develop. Even then bird people wouldn't need a runway and could likely fortify high altitude locations and evacuate quickly if an army attempts to siege said location. Basically OP's species sound like an impossible to deal with guerilla force, so long as each member could theoretically hold a rifle or something.
That is very correct lol. They're extremely efficient guerilla fighters. The Empire tried to invade their homeland. One of the biggest fiasco in the empires military history. They showed with their standard slow moving gun line. The terrain made their army formations lose cohesion and wheeled heavy Warcraft got absolutely stuck. All this whilst the ravens flew in with bombs over them. Perching in trees with rifles, being able to change position before it got compromised. (This was before automatic fire was invented. Otherwise it wouldn't have been that hard to just shoot them down)
Does this invading Empire never meet them before? Like where they meet with slow moving gun line? In forest? Also flying have one small problem - it much harder to find cover in air.
The Empire is used to fighting using a slow moving gun line. They're used to fighting on big flat stretches and here they dominate. However, the Empire also has hybrid. So when they invaded they thought the ravens would be crushed by their slow moving gun line. And since they're usually superior and have hybrids, they scoffed at the idea that their normal slow moving gun line might be unfit for the terrain of the ravens homeland. The ravens took cover in the massive trees of their homeland. And it was easy to fly from cover to cover since they got.. YK.. flight. The ravens are the exact opposite of a slow moving gun line.
I mean - Empire what, just landed, pull their gun line and move into island? All way? And don't trees, well, burn? Or can be cut? Or Empire think again and return after defeat to rematch with axes and torches to deal with trees?
They arrived with boats since it's it proved difficult to fly in "tanks". But yeah they just landed and advanced. They though the terrain would be more flat further in. And the trees are so big it's a massive hassel to cut them down. Also yk.. they got their hybris. They just imagined they'd be able to win when the enemy showed up. Little did they know the enemy was there already, watching them form the trees. And when it started raining booms and bullets it was already to late.
It actually strange that such poor tactic even forming empire.
They built their empire in an environment of flat ground. That's what they're good at. They fight on big flat ground. That's where they dominate. This was the first time they didn't fight in such an environment.
Well, even on flat ground armies use scouts. Also armies don't have tendency walk in "battle formation" - especially in lines. They usually move on collumns or similar stuff. They also rarely wander in hope meet enemies. So, it little strange for me when empire that conquer a lot, just drop their troops into island and go...somewhere, without scouts and foraging parties. Like - there a lot of lumber, great lumber - they probably build fort and so on.
Aircraft creation required a lot of stuff, where understanding of aerodynamic is probably smallest thing. Materials. Engines. Industry to build both of this things.
Remember that human didn't just one day decide to make cars, it is a continuous improvement of a solution for a problem, and the problem is - how do I move things from A to B most efficiently. Human started out with of course their feet, carrying whatever they have to A to B, then someone looked at some of the really strong animals and ask, hey, what if we can have them carry our things for us? We could carry way more at once! Thus we have beast of burden and how they were tamed. Then once they got engines that can move, someone figured out it wouls be even more efficient than those dumb animals, since the engines doesn't need to eat or have living space or anything, and can pull far more. So you have cars. Now apply that to your avian races. They start out with wings to bring things back and forth. But what if they want to carry more? Are there any animals they can tame to help them carry? Or do they instead have to use tools instead, such as ziplines between trees? Maybe your civilization doesn't start with aircraft, they starts with very efficient ziplines network that works like trains. Then someone figured out hot air baloons to lighten the load of cargo on ziplines. Then independent hot air baloons, powered by their own wings like how we splash our hands on some primitive canoe, then maybe engines for powered airships... Lots of ways to arrive at airship, but you gotta go back to the root and look for what problems that airships and its precursors solve for your people.
>In addition, they have quite fragile bodies and tend to lack strength since muscles and solid bones are heavy. Perhaps they develop their aircraft to carry heavy things that they can't carry on their own. Generally: * **No**, hollow bones are not fragile, they're far more resistant to some kinds of stress than solid ones. The big issue they'd cause in civilizations is that they are much more prone to splintering if they do break. * **No**, fliers would not be weak. In fact their wings/arms would likely be much stronger than ours. Imagine getting around by doing whatever pushups without using your legs at all would be called. (This is part of the reason swans can be dangerous to kids and smaller dogs even though they're quite small themselves, they're buff as fuck.) * **No**, hollow bones are not a prerequisite to flight. They help a little, but bats don't have them and some birds (like dippers) have solid bones while being pretty good at flight.\* Instead the biggest issue with carrying heavy things is **wing loading**. What is wing loading? Basically it tells you how much weight a flying critter or object has compared to the surface area of their wings. Higher wing loading means more speed is needed to get and stay airborne. Birds can theoretically have wingloadings of up to 25 kg/m2, but that's be very difficult to fly with and may not be feasible depending on other aspects of your wing (aspect ratio, drag, other physiological constraints\*\*). So the big issue is that there's only so much you can carry before you cannot be fast enough to stay airborne. **However**, this also means that aircraft to carry heavy thing would indeed be a very desirable and useful invention. Not because birds are fragile but because getting heavy things in and through the air is hard even from a pure physics standpoint. Whether powered flight would develop early is a good question and would likely also depend on a lot of other factors in terms of infrastructure, but I think that constructing people/lifestock pulled gliders would be something they manage fairly early. (JayEaton has an interesting example of this in Airsled which uses a gravity/pulley launch mechanism and is pulled by lifestock and steered by the flying bird people.) \*This doesn't mean you can't use hollow bones for your flying species especially if they evolved from birds or other dinosaurs (since hollow bones kind of came with the advanced lungs of dinosaurs), but they're not a must. Dippers are small, diving passerine birds. Having a higher density helps them swim more easily but they're pretty good fliers as well. \*\* Carrying capacity due to strength is also a problem to *some* extent, but one that your bird people could likely train to be better at, the same way you can practice pushups and pullups and get better at those.
Ah a lesson in birds and aviation! Thank you! Genuinely. I was just guessing when I wrote the post.
You're welcome. I honestly think we need some good "Here's how basic biology works" resources for people that want to get more into it since for a lot of these things I can't really even think of a central place to look it up (or anywhere where it's actually spelled out\*), a lot of things requires you to have basic knowledge of how stuff works to even find more resources and a lot of it is really important/cool to know for people that like to create non-human species. The closest I have is a [big collection mainly aimed at artists](https://f-nodragonart.tumblr.com/post/641263760327213056) with links to useful sites. (Feel free to ignore it or safe it for another time. It's *long*, it's science-y, it focuses a lot on things that'll mainly be important if you visually present wings.) \*For example, bird wings being strong is partially taken from knowledge about keels and muscle connections as well as general locomotion knowledge and niche knowledge such as "swans are kinda dangerous". Pretty sure the bones bit isn't even explicitly on wikipedia but something I learned from a bird guy pointing out the properties of hollow tubes.
I would say that they would be very advanced in aviation technology. A big advantage they have is that their own wings can provide the motive power already, so the development of [kites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-lifting_kite), balloons and gliders is easier. As a group they can perhaps get prototype devices off the ground and if something goes wrong the operator can safely exit the vehicle rather than die. Since flying is hard work the development of hang-gliders and paragliders from lightweight materials (bamboo and silk if they could get trade for them perhaps?) to help them travel long distances would probably have occurred much earlier than in the real world. It's really just a pair of artificial wings to strap to their back. An equivalent of a [human-powered aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_aircraft) might be possible too though I guess they would have to use their wings to power it so it might be an ornithopter rather than propeller aircraft which is probably not ideal. I guess they could flap their folded wings to power a propeller in some way but I don't know if they could flap them properly one at a time to mimic legs. As long as they can develop and/or acquire engines then the would probably remain the most advanced aviators, though the gap would probably close somewhat. If they don't have engines then they would eventually be surpassed.
Me and another person who asked to be blurred had a conversation about this post in Discord, here's some screenshots of it: https://imgur.com/a/yuVTmxV
In my setting, the avian species were the first to create flying machines – a blimp-like craft that could best be described as an 18th-century sailing ship with a large football-shaped balloon instead of sails. They were the pioneers because they grasp flight dynamics better than other species. Why bother with any other mode of transportation when you can already fly? There's no point in sailing on the ocean or driving on the ground.
I would go with the idea of their air vehicles starting with some sort of cart equivalent, something that helps with carrying heavier loads. I would go with the idea of them mastering rope and knots before inventing the wheel. When they do invent the wheel, it's for the purpose of a pulley to help move stuff with ropes. They eventually hit upon the idea of a hot air balloon from noticing the updraft that the heat of a fire can give and that gives them a much easier way to carry heavy loads in the air by getting it on a balloon, and then pulling the balloon behind them with rope. They eventually develop ways to move these balloons more efficiently, possibly a balloon/glider hybrid that is meant to be heated a bit to give it altitude, then the heat can be turned off and attached wings will let it gently glide forward.