One of the most common guest complaints is a poor view of the animals. Who can blame them when all you can see of the Saltwater Crocodile is it's eye ridge peeking out of the water lilies, or the top of the hippos head as it plods along the bottom of water. An easy and practical remedy for this is an underwater viewing area. There are many different ways to create underwater viewing areas and many different styles. You can enclose them in a building or go for a more natural approach. I will go through my method of creating an underwater viewing as well as some alternate methods.
What Animals can have underwater viewing?
The answer is simple, any animal that uses the water. Saltwater crocodiles, Nile monitors, gharials, and hippopotamus would be the obvious answers, however bears, tigers, and elephants, are all also options. Deciding which animal you want to make a viewing area is important as different animals use the water in different ways. As it stands now, animals cannot dive into the water. Crocs, bears, and big cats will paddle along the top while
hippopotamus will walk along the bottom. For surface swimmers, you will want the top of the water to be at about eye level. For Hippos, you will want eye level to be even with the bottom. While this may change with future updates (at least we can hope!). For now this will give you the best views.
How to make an Underwater Viewing Point
I have watched numerous videos on this and everyone does it differently. Here I will go through my method for a hippopotamus viewing area.
The first thing I do is flatten the terrain to the level I want for the water. You will want to flatten further out than where you want the barrier.
Choose a watertight barrier ( Concrete, Glass, One-Way Glass, Red Brick). Glass is the most popular but you can also use the window feature on the concrete or brick barriers. You can use other barriers (fences or natural) for the land portion of your habitat. Place your barrier leaving room on either side for the viewing area.
Place your path where you want it for the viewing area. The reasoning for doing this first is that trying to place close to the barriers after water has been added will cause you to get a “obstructed by water volume” message and you won't be able to place the path. You can add path in a few different ways. You can lower the path down to your viewing area by holding the shift key and dragging down. Going down one step will give you a ramp, 2 steps will give you stairs. You can also use terrain tools to create a more natural slope (future entry on terrain tools).
Alternately, you can place your path first using the tunneling path feature. You can find a video by 8-bit Josh on this method here.
Once your path is in place, add your water and finish your habitat. You can dress up your viewing area however you like.
The Underwater Tunnel
You may have seen ideas of an underwater tunnel floating around. I will not be guiding you on how to do this as it is incredible tricky (it is essentially making the game work in a way it was not meant to work at this point). Also while I won't deny they look cool, I don't find that it gives the guests the best view as they don't look up and since they don't look up they won't see the animals. However, if you are interested in creating underwater tunnels, Paulsley has a video on how to do so here.
Underwater viewing areas can be a great alternate view for guests. If you need clarification please let me know in the comments and share with me your own underwater views.
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