Hi Creators,
Today, we are happy to share a highly requested update to our lighting system. We are doubling the range limit for all local lights — PointLight, SpotLight, and SurfaceLight— from 60 to 120.
This change makes it easier for you to light larger spaces with fewer lights, which can streamline your workflow and improve performance.
Two PointLights increase in range from 60 to 120 using the Old Roblox Noob (5 studs tall)
and Chess Queen (42 studs tall) for scale.
We know you’ve been asking for this for a long time, and we appreciate your patience. Increasing light range is a complex technical challenge due to some of the lighting techniques we use on lower end devices. It directly impacts memory, latency, and performance, especially on lower-end devices. Our goal was to deliver a meaningful increase while maintaining stability for all players.
Why 120?
When we increase the range of a light, its computational cost rises exponentially. We chose 120 as the new limit because it provides a good balance between utility, performance, and usability. It allows you to light larger spaces with fewer lights, as shown in the examples below, while keeping the performance and memory impact stable for all devices.
We know there are some use cases that need more than 120 studs. Our team is researching ways to further reduce the performance and memory costs associated with extended ranges. Our goal is to find a solution that will allow for even higher limits in the future, but we wanted to get this meaningful update into your hands now rather than waiting for a more complex, long-term solution. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on our progress.
How This Affects Performance
Fewer lights mean better performance. While a single 120-range light has a higher computational cost than a single 60-range light, its true performance advantage lies in its ability to illuminate a larger area. By using one large light instead of four, you reduce the total number of computations the engine has to perform.
- Before: Four 60-range lights are needed to cover a large area, requiring more instances and more processing.
- Now: One 120-range light can cover the same area more uniformly, using fewer resources.
Extending this to larger areas:
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Before: Twenty 60-range lights are needed to light the entire Racing Template race track.
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Now: Five 120-range lights light the entire race track.
Action Required: Potential Breaking Changes
This update may cause visual changes in experiences that create lights procedurally. Previously, any light range set above 60 in a script was automatically clamped down to 60. With the new limit, that clamp has moved to 120.
Here is how scripted light range values will be affected:
- Range ≤ 60: No change.
- 60 < Range ≤ 120: Light range will increase from 60 to the scripted value.
- Range ≥ 120: Light range will increase from 60 to 120.
We recommend using the Find All function (Command + Shift + F / CTRL + Shift + F) in Studio and looking for “.Range” to ensure that all light range values are set to less than or equal to 60 to avoid any breaking changes.
Note: This only affects the native Range property on lights. If you use a custom variable or attribute named “Range” in your own scripts, no changes are needed.
Known Issues
- The Studio properties panel light range slider only goes up to 60.
- The fix for this should be live by September 25, 2025. In the meantime, you can still manually enter values up to 120 in the range property field or script the range up to 120.
What’s Next
As mentioned previously, we are also working to improve light attenuation to give you more realistic and nuanced falloff control. We hope to deliver this in the next couple of months, so stay tuned for more updates. We will continue to investigate how to reduce the computational cost for even higher ranges so that we can raise the light range, but we have no timeline to share yet.
As always, we want your feedback. Please let us know your thoughts on this update, and if you have any cool examples of how you’re using this increased limit in your experiences!
Happy building,
Roblox Rendering Team
