* Normally the darkness would be black, though there might be lighting settings or post processing Instances to change the color of the darkness to make it look like misty lighter fog
The respective posts are the solutions. There aren’t other ways to do this (besides beams or semi-transparent meshes and other overly complicated, equally or less functional solutions than the ones above).
The spotlight instance could be placed in an attachment positioned above the humanoid root part. Then the light would go in the direction of the player.
The player could also be marked as CastShadow = false, then the character wouldn’t block the spotlight and it could be placed directly in the HRP.
Having a spotlight shouldn’t cause any performance issues, they’re used all the time in games.
I think the OP is okay with the player seeing themselves. The spotlight would be inside the player, so it would move with them as they walk.
Do you mean with low graphics settings the lighting wouldn’t render the darkness properly so they could still see? I guess a UI could be used on the edges to make sure this doesn’t happen.
You could put a PointLight in a Part about 5 studs ahead of the player, but have it’s range at about 12 studs. Make the Brightness lower so it doesn’t overpower the original spotlight, but lights up the area around the player without adding the ‘circle and cone’ effect in your picture. As has been stated you can remove the CastShadow effect from the PointLight so the player’s body doesn’t cast a shadow behind them.