Featherweight parts, despite their name, have nothing to do with feathers, flying or anything bird-related. They do, however, have a lot to do with weight: while old ROBLOX parts are “heavy” memory users, featherweight parts are “super light,” allowing us to load and render more of them with the same computing power. The first iteration of featherweight parts has now released for ROBLOX on all platforms and it has already proven revolutionary in some ROBLOX places.

The following table shows the number of milliseconds required to render one frame. In a future release, these numbers will improve even further as we featherweight more materials, surfaces, and primitives.

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Updated 12/14 at 3:37 p.m. PT: We’ve released an update to ROBLOX Mobile that improves performance and in-game control, and makes the White Earbuds accessible via the mobile catalog on all iOS devices.

I’m excited to announce to everyone in the ROBLOX community — new members and old — that, as of today, ROBLOX Mobile is no longer in beta and all users can play ROBLOX on their iOS device of choice: iPad 2+, iPhone 4+ and iPod touch 5th Generation. First off, there are a few ways you can get the app:

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We’ve talked previously about our ongoing effort to build robust joints and motors, and even touched on implementing seats for boats that support rear propellers. We’re still ironing out bugs with our soon-to-be released robust joints and motors, but we decided to release our new boat seat and water propeller support first. These features function independently, letting you experiment with propellers and watercraft today. Though this blog post features some pretty complex ideas in terms of building, we are hard at work on streamlining these building methods in the future so they’re intuitive for all uses. For now, check out what we’ve got so far.

In order to understand the changes we’ve made to ROBLOX’s water physics, let’s discuss how a propeller works, particularly in water. Like tires on a car, propellers convert power into forward motion by rapidly spinning at just the right speed, velocity, and most importantly, angle. The faster they spin, the faster your water-based vehicle should propel forward.

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We recognize that holding the ROBLOX Game Conference in California creates an insurmountably long haul for some of our users in other parts of the country — and the world. So, if you couldn’t make the trip this year or just want to relive the excitement of the event, take a look through this photo and video gallery.

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