LOS range question

[Imagix]

A thought popped into mind about LOS that I don't think has been mentioned yet. How far away can you see other light sources? The scenario I'm thinking of: let's assume that the token is at the end of a 10'x500'. The token has a light source which lights up 30' bright and 30' dim. So things are somewhat visible out to 60'. Let's also assume that there exists a light source way out at the 450' mark. Will the token be able to see out to 60', darkness from there to 390', dim to 420', bright to 480', and dim out to the end at 500'? Next two wrinkles: if the corridor turns 90 degrees and the light source is 10' around the corner (thus no direct LOS to the light source, but can see the illuminated area)? How about if the corridor turns again 90 degrees and the light source is around _that_ corner?

I guess the point I'm considering is whether the light source is blindly illuminating the 60' radius, or does it respect occluders (ie: does a light source fire out straight non-bouncing lines to figure out the illuminated area)? So the token would see the end of the corridor illuminated by the light source around the first corner, but not one around the second. (OK, now if we got _real_ fancy, I suppose we could talk about the reflectivity of the walls, blah, blah, blah. but that would seem to be _way_ more detailed than necessary. Yay raytracing!)

[LordEntrails]

From the videos, the behavior I observed is that light sources, and the area they light up (reveal) can be seen at an infinite range from any token that has LOS to the source or revealed area. But, anything blocked by a wall or door etc won't be seen (no light creeping under the door!).

[Imagix]

Makes sense to me. Cool.

[EllivasKram]

Do we know how LOS calculations are calculated. In the sense that if my super duper DM’s machine with graphics card that can buy a PS5 and have some change for a 4K monitor is processing LOS. What is being processed by my players devices. Is it the exact same calculations. ? So in effect LOS and Ambient lighting and LOS limits etc is processed by all machines?

Surely we are getting to a point with all these calculations that we would be better off with hosted FGU and remote access to an instance.

[Zacchaeus]

No matter how you do it all machines need to process the data.

[Grimacus]

I guess the point I'm considering is whether the light source is blindly illuminating the 60' radius, or does it respect occluders (ie: does a light source fire out straight non-bouncing lines to figure out the illuminated area)? So the token would see the end of the corridor illuminated by the light source around the first corner, but not one around the second. (OK, now if we got _real_ fancy, I suppose we could talk about the reflectivity of the walls, blah, blah, blah. but that would seem to be _way_ more detailed than necessary. Yay raytracing!)

Actually no need for ray tracing. You can bake the lightmaps in unity3d and also use ambient occlusion and light areas to achieve quite realistic lightning without ray tracing.

And if you think how far you can see the light sources... we tested this when we were kids at camp - when it is pitch black, you can see match lighted over 1km away if there is line of sight. Of course it doesn't do much illumination but your eye detects it.