v1.10.23

Owl Anatomy Rebuild

• Replaced the previous generic/cartoon-like owl treatment with a new species-aware inline SVG anatomy system.
• Owls now use broad feathered wings, compact upright bodies, short fan tails, integrated facial discs, forward-facing eyes, and small hooked beaks.
• Added 12 owl morphology profiles to produce meaningful structural differences instead of relying mainly on recoloring.
• Increased owl artwork size and readable anatomical detail for wall-display viewing distances.
• Preserved static heads, tails, facial markings, and plumage markings.
• Only whole-actor flight and wing motion remain animated.

22 Modeled Owl Species

• Great horned owl now uses prominent ear tufts, throat contrast, heavier proportions, barring, and wing markings.
• Barred owl uses dark eyes with horizontal barring and vertical lower-body streaking.
• Barn owl uses a pale heart-shaped facial disc, dark eyes, slimmer proportions, and lighter underside.
• Eastern, western, and tropical screech owls use compact proportions, short tufts, and distinct regional coloring/patterns.
• Collared scops owl uses short tufts and a visible pale collar.
• Burrowing owl uses smaller proportions, visible long legs, pale brows, and spotting.
• Short-eared owl uses very small tufts and strong dark eye patches.
• Long-eared owl uses tall ear tufts and a narrower, taller body.
• Snowy owl uses broad white anatomy with visible dark spotting and barring.
• Spectacled owl uses a dark head with prominent pale spectacle rings.
• Tawny owl uses a rounder rufous/brown morphology with dark eyes.
• Little owl and pearl-spotted owlet use smaller bodies and species-specific spotting/brows.
• Eagle owl, spotted eagle owl, and Verreaux's eagle owl use larger, heavier anatomy and stronger tufts.
• Verreaux's eagle owl includes its characteristic pink eyelid treatment.
• Brown fish owl uses heavier proportions, a larger beak, and short/shaggy tufts.
• Boobook, powerful owl, and barking owl retain distinct Australian morphology and field marks.

Mixed Birds and Owls

• Owl Mode is now additive instead of replacing normal birds.
• Birds can remain visible while owls are enabled.
• Pi 4 foreground allocation preserves at least one detailed bird and one detailed owl when both are available.
• Mixed wildlife remains bounded by the measured Pi 4 performance budget.
• Wildlife actors retain stable species identities for their lifetimes.
• Flight-loop animation events no longer reroll bird or owl species.
• Routine same-context weather/overlay rebuilds do not change an actor into another species.

Raspberry Pi 4 Wildlife Performance

• The substantially larger owl artwork remains compatible with the recovered Pi 4 performance budget.
• The dedicated mixed-wildlife Chromium gate remains approximately 59–60 FPS.
• Bird and owl head/tail micro-animation remains disabled to spend rendering budget on static species fidelity instead.
• Forecast performance, GPU recovery, NatureScape density, and the existing Pi 4 compositor improvements remain preserved.

Background Transition Smoothness

• Removed the forced synchronous layout read from the background reveal path.
• Previous-background media cleanup is no longer performed synchronously during the visible transition.
• Old background layers are cleaned up later during idle time.
• Pi 4 last-background binary persistence is throttled to at most once every five minutes.
• Pi 4 persistence is deferred by 12 seconds after a transition.
• Initial Pi 4 offline-cache filling is delayed to 120 seconds.
• Pi 4 reserve background candidate work is capped at 24 assets.
• Pi 4 cache processing yields more aggressively between assets.
• Background transition, preload, persistence, cleanup, and cache activity remains timestamped for remote diagnostics.
• Recent long-task timestamps remain available for correlation with future field freezes.