Option to toggle Slat Shadows on Spotlights

Michael Loeven shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

Its been bothering me for a while that slats on the spotlight cast such pronounced shadows in the illumination cone and are not only visually displeasing but also make the illumination less effective as a result. I would like to see an option in the spotlight control panel that disables the shadows cast by the slats or that a secondary spotlight model without slats is added. Frankly the slats on the lights serve no purpose other than an aesthetic choice and appear to be a homage to old school ship signal lights that ran on gas or oil and needed the slats for sending morse code as you cant turn a gas/oil lamp on and off quickly enough for signaling. They should remain an aesthetic feature and not effect illumination

Replies (1)

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Moreover, they shouldn't be there in the first place. In reality, unless there's an unnecessarily and disproportionally (for a simple spotlight) complicated optical system in place, the slats' shadows would be swamped pretty much immediately by the light's own dispersion. (And even if it was a spotlight that could cast shaped lightcones, like a gobo projector, those slats would still not be in the image plane and would still not show in the swath they cast. They'd be deliberately out of plane so as to specifically not show up. If anything, they'd be there for brightness control where closing the slats, or shutters, would uniformly dim the brightness.)


I wish Keen would apply as much fervour in aspects significantly more in need of it as they did in trying to be more realistic than reality with their slat shadows … but I guess that, too, runs counter to their UI design. (Or "design", ahem.)

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