This seems a bit confusing. Most likely theyāre talking about the surface appearance, but they never mentioned New Terrain, New parts, Or Built-in materials. Itās a bit worrying that itās not on the roadmap, yet. It seems they only posted for January and wont be planning out the whole year, like they normally would in previous roadmaps. Itās been a whole month with nothing said on this topic.(Meaning no new information) When can we opt in beta or when can we enable the beta feature?
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It is on the Roadmap.
https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/resources/Roblox-Platform-Roadmap
Itās under Improved Terrain Blending.
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Might be intentional. On the old roadmap they mentioned custom terrain materials. It is possible that they merged the two topics (surfaceappearance, and this). I really really hope they are actually working on it and that is why this update is taking so long. Uploading custom, tiling materials, be it for terrain or for parts, would be amazing and is really needed.
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In that case it says its already launched? What 
Heres all you need to know. Itās not released and it redirecting it to this topic was a mistake. No one expect whoever works at roblox has access to it.
Update: I did get it confirmed by Roblox Staff that the link to this topic on SurfaceAppearance was a mistake.
Edit: I see you already knew that, my bad 
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Yea I did, I was agreeing with you.
Oh. My. GOOOOD!!! HOORAYYY I CANāT BELIEVE THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING!! Iāve dreamed of this for so long 
Originally, I was just going to use the upcoming PBR feature to work my way around it but thisā¦ this is the real tea! Itās going to make my life and every devsā life MUCH easier.
Also maybe add other materials on the waiting list like :
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Roof tiles (Please and thank you <3)
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Wool
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Woven basket
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Leather/ leather couch or cushion (IDK what is called but I mean the couches with the concave bumps
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Japanese tatami rug
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Fine china porcelain
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Rope
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Mosaic
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Sponge
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Other brick walls
And thatās all for now I guess! But anyway, thank you all so much for this wonderful update! Roblox keeps growing as a more prominent platform each day and keeps on accomplishing huge esthetical and technical endeavours to further help us, the devs of Roblox.
Thank you on the behalf of all of us,
Sincerely,
-MiracleStar
Edit: Also will we be able to paint on parts like we can paint on terrain someday? I mean, for example, you have a slate rectangle and you pass a brush on it and whatever was under the brush becomes another material like grass letās say?
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Thatās a pretty cool sounding concept!
āimagine instead of decals and Jpg images, you could paint on a part like a canvas using just materials/colors!ā
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Unpopular opinion: This is lame. Developers should be able to upload custom materials for terrain. If you want real progress on your platform with professional artists, make it happen.
Theyāre working on that too. And having an expanded default library is necessary for people who donāt have professional artists (aka MOST OF ROBLOX) so the solo devs can actually somewhat compete with the huge dev teams.
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Roblox should appeal to the experienced dev teams first cause theyāre more likely to produce high-quality games in relation to inexperienced dev teams, look at all the games on the front page; the devs have been on Roblox for years and are experienced.
But if Roblox doesnāt appeal to the inexperienced devs, thereāll be no new experienced devs to replace any experienced devs that may choose to leave for the real games industry. And then thereās no new good games. Then Roblox dies.
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I know you get my point, this made me chuckle. Lol
This is extremely cool! Canāt wait to play around with it in studio.
Or they could appeal to both at the same time. Helping out inexperienced devs can make help make them better games.
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Is there a way to make flat terrian without plugins, I really like how good it looks and I canāt wait for all the new types but is there a way to use/edit terrain like its a part, If so I canāt wait to utilize all these new types!
Edit: I figured out how and that I am dum lol
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A material Iād love to see added for parts is Chrome. Basically a mirror finished metal that makes the part super reflective.
Hereās an example on what Iām on about:
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I highly agree with this. It is incredibly useful for futuristic cities, or even smaller things, such as gold coins / bars.
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That could already be done if you used smooth plastic and turn up the reflectance, but if you mean to reflect the surroundings and not just the skybox, then im afraid that roblox doesnt have ray tracing yet.
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