PlayerUnknown starts filling in the desert map blanks with new Battlegrounds screens

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer Bluehole is continuing to fill in the blanks of the game's long-awaited, and hugely anticipated, desert map.

The insatiable clamour for new details can largely be blamed on the tortuously slow drip-feed of information that followed the map's official unveiling earlier this year. And here we go again, with the release of five new desert map images.

These are a little different, and maybe a little more interesting than previous screens released by PlayerUnknown maestro Brendan Greene though. While earlier shots focussed on the map's busy urban areas and impeccably sandy atmospherics, the new shots go a little off the beaten path, showing some of the notable (and likely enormously useful when you're trying not to get your head blown off) features and landmarks away from civilisation.

The new images, which appeared in a blog post on Nvidia's website, offer a glimpse at a sprawling oil field, various structures that could simultaneously be described as horribly exposed and reassuringly secluded (ranging from a secure warehouse to a homely cottage), and even a surprisingly vandalism-free bus stop for those with a death wish. There's also a shot of what appears to be a different town to the ones revealed previously.

That (and the other half a dozen or so official screens released so far) should be enough to at least inspire a degree of preliminary strategic planning. And if nothing else, it's cathartic to finally see some of the desert map's finer details, having spend so long tracing its evolution through the broader brush strokes of early sketches and work-in-progress maps.

Still, it's hard not to suspect that most people's anticipation glands are probably at peak capacity by now. Hopefully it won't be too long until we get an official desert map release date - otherwise things (especially things within gland-shot) might start to get messy.