I think a big issue is that voxels aren’t very scalable. For example, a headlight with a range of 60 studs might light up an area of about 15x15x60 voxels, but doubling the range to 120 studs will suddenly make it light up about an area of about 30x30x120 (assuming a SpotLight, again very approximate), which is 8x as large.
This forces them to reduce how many voxels are updated per-frame, which isn’t a problem for static lightbulbs in the picture you’ve sent. The issue is that people bring up using these far-reaching lights for dynamic stuff like car headlights, but that’ll simply look way too ugly when the light keeps lagging behind the vehicle due to the slow update rate.
Of course, this is all circumvented with Future lighting, but not everybody uses that. I’m sure that the majority of games use Voxel lighting Technology.
Hopefully they can implement this when they migrate to the new voxel system they put on the Roadmap:
I enjoy going through this post when I see the notification for it, you get to read the workarounds, issues, complaints, and ideas. One idea I had the other day is if the lighting engine could be changed while in-game via scripts and ideally per client to toggle.
Basically an amazing feature would be to be able to change lighting engines if the player saw suit, or if the context of an area in a game didn’t need complex light at the moment.
Some may doubt this isn’t possible but you can actually just do this in a playtest with roblox studio, it’s just a matter of it not working in live for some reason, though that isn’t too doubt something more complex could be at play for why it is not working.
I completely agree with many others that developers should have greater control over their experience on Roblox. The engine has the potential to be excellent if there are fewer limitations.
Ohhh Roblox… Always limiting things on release then forgetting to update and keep them competitive with other engines for years. This is pretty much a classic move of the company. Roblox, please just double the range limit or something. It’s getting very annoying having to place like 6 different point lights in order to cover a decently large area.
And also, this isn’t 2014 anymore. Phones have massively improved in their strength and graphical fidelity. I know it probably isn’t easy to change and configure the lighting engine and make sure it works with other things but just please. At least add it to a calendar or something!
If you want to stay competitive with other engines, please boost this limit!!!
Something that is way too slow based on the hardware we’re given. It should be customizable, or at least prioritized towards a certain location in the world. Camera.Focus does almost nothing.
So, I don’t believe that there is a significant “force” to have a slow update rate, at least one that is not an artificial requirement.
I see. Yes, I’ve read that part of the thread, but it is not customizable and light shearing is inevitable even when one voxel light is moving at a rate of 30 studs per second. In my case, I would rather have frame drops than have the lights shear behind.
I’m creating a building interior that’s just about 80 or 100 studs high (and not gonna mention how many studs wide) and the hard capped range on a single light is just 60 studs.
Can I make something big that won’t just make Roblox crap itself? Shouldn’t we be able to break the engine so the engineers can improve it?
Roblox is adding so many things that arguably would be more cost intensive than increasing light range such as real time CSG plus editable meshes and images. Why have we gotten one reply from staff many months ago ironically leaving us in the dark?
well… there’s like. barely anything, one says its on the radar, other says theyre working on GPU based lighting (since Voxel/Shadowmap uses CPU infact), and other says it appears to be in the works.
though, how long it’ll take for them: god knows. Probably by 2024.
This is being added now. There is a fast flag present in roblox that raises the light range by 4 times. 60 → 240.
Dont believe me? Check it out yourself.
Interestingly there seems to be a test related to light attenuation aswell, but its broken and the lighting is pixelated. Probably for testing purposes at the moment.
Unironically amazing to see this sort of feedback being actually taken into account. Very curious to see if 240 is the final hard cap on range or if it gets extended further after some more testing.
oh my god im happy
we might’ve spoiled the what i assume to be the christmas present to us all, but this still makes me happy. Yeah 240 might not be the best, but personally still better than what we’ve been stuck with for 7 years straight (idk if there are plans extending it since its only testing)
(also its currently really janky, which is expected. its a FFlag afterall. but i assume thats where GPU based Voxels kick in.) also, ik this is irrelevant, but would beams not illuminated by Future light be addressed eventually?
The current issue with the extended light range (even in the future lighting model) is that in the distance lights simply dont update properly. So that needs to be adressed, likely by the removal of cpu voxels and extension of their render range.
And for the issue with it not being illuminated, aren’t beams a 2D plane? So its understandable its not illuminated from 1 side because of the face not facing the light source.
It works with the sun on FIB too. That is why it is weird because in FIB only the sun illuminates and cast shadows on beams while no other light does.
There was even a version of FIB where beams worked with all lights
It’s only a very slight change. Only somewhat noticeable when comparing them side by side. Though it definitely looks better and the weird line that is currently here with future lights was gone when the flag worked.
Anyways I really hope they actually do something with the light ranges. The extendedlightranges flag has been here for a while now (2 months at least), and I still don’t have much hope that it’s going to be fixed soon.
