I’m sort of annoyed, so please, if you notice a slight bit of anger in this post, then you know why.
I’ve been making a variety of streetlights (including spotlights), and I noticed that I cannot make spotlights (all other lights too) reach further than 60 Studs.
Then, when I go far away from the Light, it suddenly disappears, which is just totally weird.
I do not understand why there is a cap in the first place? It’s so unintuitive, weird, and just completely wrong.
I honestly wouldn’t care if it would affect performance, JUST LET US MAKE LIGHTS REACH FURTHER, AS FAR AS WE WANT.
Power Imagination? Then remove caps.
I honestly don’t understand why there is a cap for something as simple as LIGHTS, of all things.
Can anyone tell me if this will be fixed, or is there a workaround for this?
I know that I could put multiple Spotlights, but that method can easily be exposed by players, when being close to the light.
Thanks.
PS: This is the next best topic to post on, please don’t take this down.
This should be in development discussion. But honestly I think it is to standardize performance across games. Personally though i think its stupid because as developers we should have the freedom to make our game different and customize it to our liking.
As I mentioned, it should be up to the developer to set the “cap”. 60 Studs is a terribly small range. Baseball Stadium lights aren’t possible, and any far range lights aren’t possible for that matter.
I think that Roblox needs to give us alot more freedom when it comes to setting up lighting and graphics in general. Roblox should allow us to script our own shaders so we don’t have to deal with the sh*t default shading Roblox provides.
What I’ve done in the past is for example use a SpotLight pointed in whatever direction (let’s use straight down) with an angle of 30 degrees and range of 60 studs. Then put a series of Transparent Parts with SurfaceLights in them to simulate a wider pattern that follows in the 30 degree ‘cone’ of light. about 55 studs lower in each step down.
Yeah I’ve seen other people use that method too, and it does indeed work, but it’s kind of a cheesy solution, as the method can easily be exposed when getting closer to the light source.
If you get what I mean?
Thanks for the input though.
Do you mean exposed if you go past each light’s rendering range and disappearing?
Roblox definitely limits items like this (or details in Terrain, shadows, etc.) when trying to render distant items. If they didn’t then it’s likely that performance would suffer on most devices. Even 3D games on consoles limit the rendering ability of their games, and they are fine-tuned to exactly the processes required, unlike Roblox which has to limit rendering on a platform that has many users making games with many ‘unrequired’ processes built in.
If you meant a change in the lighting visually down the length of the rendered light using 1 Spotlight and a bunch of SurfaceLights then try making the Spotlight really bright and reduce the brightness (and distance from the previous light) of each SurfaceLight down the line to make it smoother transition.
My cursor will hover over the “problematic” areas, i.e. the brighter spots and ridge-like shadows. It stands out and looks a lot less pleasing, which is probably what he meant by “this method can easily be exposed”.
The only difference is that I use spotlights and attachments instead of surfacelights and invisible parts.
The issue with your setup is that you’ve got SpotLights that fan out from a central point at each ‘level’ of light. @SwitchedDreams
What I was proposing as per the image below was large Parts, Transparent, CanCollide false, Anchored (or in your case, welded to the sub) with SurfaceLights that would fan out from the full area a few studs ahead of where the previous light would be out of range (in my case below, 50 studs because the previous light range only goes 60 studs. This would cause the light pattern to continue in the same spread as the original light was emitting.
Below I’d have Cylinder Parts (square in the second example) with a SurfaceLight in them at 50, 100, and 150 studs. The Brightness in the first light would be higher, then decrease gradually down the line to mimic real lights. The size of each following Part would also have to match the angle of the original light and the size would depend on how wide the angle would be at 50, 100 and 150 studs.
I see, thanks for elaborating on your method. But all in all, this is a pretty complicated workaround (involves the use of trigonometry and inverse square law ) and I can understand why many people wouldn’t want to use it, including the OP.
But the topic of this thread still stands; if workarounds like these exist, why should the individual lights still be hard-capped at 60 studs range?
Also apparently SurfaceLights don’t actually cast in the shape of the part. It is just a square that gets blurry the farther you go. I have no idea if this is because I’m using the Future lighting engine or if it’s a bug or an intended behavior.
The video below encompasses your proposed workaround, and you can see how the 2nd SurfaceLight (right up close to the wall) projects a square while the first one (farther away) is all smooth and blurry.
I agree. I have a stadium thats way bigger than 60 studs, Having to put spot lights every where makes it look like polka dots and burns the life out my pc
Sorry, I was thinking about the properties of ParticleEmitters that changed a while back. You can make those emit the shape of the Part they are sized at, not SurfaceLights.
Just ignore everything I said here.
Except for the mathmatics comment you made Protorode. The mathematics wouldn’t have to be figured out if my plan worked.
In the diagram above you could just select the first SurfaceLight in the Explorer window and the lines defining the corners would show up in the Workspace view. You could copy and move that Part to the next position (50 studs) then resize the new Part by aligning the Part corners to the previous light lines and keep the same Angle to repeat the spread pattern.
this 60 stud light range limit is so ridiculously annoying and makes it a nuisance to light up a very big place, I legit have no idea why is this a thing, Roblox FiB build has no range limit and it works flawlessly, why didnt roblox implement that for current build bothers me the most if it had no issue whatsoever.
