DayZ just got its most meaningful update in months

DayZ just got its most meaningful updates in months.

Overnight, Bohemia Interactive pushed out the 0.62 update to its open-world survival zombie game. It reworks foliage and adds new ambient sounds, among other things. The idea is the the update helps make DayZ a more modern-looking and sounding game.

Here's what's new, as posted to the DayZ forum:

• New tree models
• Denser forests
• New clutter (grass, small plants)
• New surface textures - plains and such
• Improved wind behaviour
• New shader for the wind, affecting trees and grass
• Tweaked and changed lighting for the world
• Small improvements to satellite textures
• Rain affected by wind and refinement of its behaviour in general
• Many reworked locations on Chernarus
• Reworked ghillie (to be consistent with new tech)
• Small bugfixes to some issues from 0.61
• New ambient sounds

Worth highlighting are the new tree models. Players are reporting you can no longer hide inside pine trees, which prevents tree camping.

Players also report much denser forests and nicer ambient sounds, such as birds chirping. Players also seem impressed with the way wind now works in the game.

Here's map designer Mark Gill on the new and improved forests:

"With the new forest overhaul, we hope the survivor experience in DayZ will be greatly enhanced. We tried to make travelling through forests a more immersive experience. Repetition can quickly become boring on a map of our scale, so as you traverse through forests across the map, the visuals will change at a fairly rapid pace. This was a large undertaking, but it was important to keep the visual stimuli changing in unpredictable ways."

The status of DayZ is always a hot topic because the game has been on Steam as an early access title for what feels like an age and Bohemia has yet to say when it's actually coming out. (Bertie chatted with the game's creative director Brian Hicks last year to find out what's going on with DayZ.)

This latest update, however, shows the cogs are still churning, even if they're moving slowly. Fingers crossed DayZ hits beta soon.