I was making a game when I decided to switch out my PointLights to SurfaceLights to cover a larger area, but the lighting looked very bugged and stretched for some reason. I decided to do some digging and it only looks like this when you’re using a surface light in a dark area, and the larger the part the surface light is, the more stretched the shadows get.
This is a result of Roblox choosing a cheaper way to do area lights, opting to reuse the exact lighting code for pointlights and spotlights except with some modified input parameters. The lower shadow resolution is because they use the same shadow resolution but instead just stretch the shadow map.
I did some experimenting in the shader code myself and got a way better result than what Roblox currently has, but I’m obviously not a Roblox employee so I can’t do anything about it.
What we have now is what we got, unfortunately, and it’s intentional. I recommend not using surfacelights often and if you are, use them without shadows, as the existing ones lack the appropriate blur filter to make them realistic.
