Interior Light Falloff Setting strange

derPacifist shared this feedback 4 years ago
Submitted

1. It says "exponential falloff". Is that correct? I mean F=I/(4pi r^2) (aka Intensity and Flux). Or is it supposed to be a falloff caused by dust?


2. Why does the light fall off quicker the lower the value is? value 2="quadratic falloff"=r^(-2) should be quicker than value 1="linear"=r^(-1)


3. Why is 2 not the default value? I mean it's the realistic one.

Replies (1)

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1

So this was an interesting thing to investigate. Space Engineers doesn't seem to use an industry standard light falloff curve. I'm not qualified to say, but I'm guessing it's a smoothstep. This almost makes sense, since the light needs to falloff within a given range, but ultimately it doesn't resemble exponential or linear no matter what you do. It also means the curve depends on the Range as well as the Falloff.


You can approximate linear with a Falloff of about 0.7 at most Ranges. For a sharper falloff (like exponential would be) you go lower. A Falloff of 3 gives you a light that doesn't start to fade until halfway to the end of its Range.

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Thanks for looking into this! I didn't expect anyone to answer anymore. You're probably right with the smooth step. And I can see, why it makes sense: it falls off rapidly and it simulates extra light close to the source through scattering.

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