I have created a scene as a modification of Unity’s procedural examples lightning bolt scene (it’s the scene on the picture). This scene basically features some objects and some particle emitter, but most importantly, point lights are placed and then repositioned smoothly in Update. The overlap of several light sources on the ground creates a pretty effect.
My problem is that in modifying the scene, I find that the point light overlap is unreliable. For instance, if I place a player (equipped with its own point light) on the ground, its light source is not visible when the lightning bolt’s moving light sources are around, and only when I move the player away from the lightning bolt light radius the player’s own light becomes visible on the ground.
Another issue I experienced is when I have very many light sources, some are simply not rendered until I cranck up their intensity value about a threshold. Then they suddenly become visible and clear.
I have found other threads where people have similar issues. For example, in this thread Eiznek said:
Glad it helped!
On mobile Unity editor gives warning if you put more than 5 i think… not sure for average desktop…
Generally i believe the more visible objects in scene effected by light the more impact it has on draw calls, which effects performance…
if performance is important for you … i suggest to make lights only effect important objects in scene by using culling mask…
Lights marked as important are treated as pixel lights until max pixel light count is reached at which point everything else is treated as vertex light (up to 4 I believe - which is why some lights appear to be discarded). In deferred rendering mode, all lights are considered pixel lights.