So I was tweaking lighting settings in the launcher the other day, and noticed just how odd point/explosion/tube lights were behaving. In order to get it bright enough to be convincing in cases where objects are pretty much right beside the lightsource, the tags must be tweaked to pretty high values. The problem with this is that objects that are further out are still lit quite strongly, which looks incredibly stupid.
I'm wondering what sort of code is controlling light radius for all lights, and how the luminance falloff is determined. Normal lights drop off as a factor of distance squared, which on the scales Freespace deals with, should mean that drop-off should be much steeper than it is now. I'm guessing that changing it could allow for better weapon lighting effects (maybe), though it might not be worth the effort.
(On a similar note, lighting seems to be heavily angle dependent. I'm not sure if there's a way to increase diffuse strength to compensate or something, or if this is simply an engine limitation. Beams will often not light up its target or shooter at all unless viewed at certain angles. I bet this is probably an engine limitation though, so whatever)
