Point lights disappear in Orthographic Camera when far from (0,0,0)

I have been encountering a strange bug with Point Lights viewed through an Orthographic Camera, in addition to the previously reported issues with other lights and shadows. In play mode with an Orthographic Camera point lights function perfectly until they are a certain distance away from (0,0,0). A point light with its world position at (±1051.99023,0,0) will function as expected, but the instant that it passes to ±1052 in the X coordinate it stops being visible or casting shadows in the Orthographic Camera (but functions fine in a Perspective Camera). I did some testing to try to identify the problem and discovered that increasing the point light’s Attenuation Radius seems to have a nearly linear effect with where this occurs, even though the camera that we are viewing through is attached to the player and can be standing directly on top of the light.

For example, setting the point light’s Attenuation Radius to 1001 changes the X position maximum we can see the light at to ±1053.04895. This seems to hold mostly true to the maximum Attenuation Radius of 16384.0, where the light is visible until it is placed beyond ±17205.19726. Changing the Z value to anything more than ±6.9282 while at the maximum causes the light to disappear, as well, so it’s definitely a distance problem and not related to just the x value.

I was looking into my scene (which is derived from the 2D Platformer C++ project with elements used from the Paper2D plugin) and noticed that there is a camera generated on play with the default values from the Player Camera Manager. Is it possible that this camera is confusing the culling distance on the point light when the Orthographic Camera is still nearby?

Thanks so much for any help you guys can provide. If I can give you any more information I’ll be glad to!

Hey Surface Tension -

Thank you for your report, I had previous entered a bug about Point Lights and lighting in general not functioning as expected when using the Orthogonal Camera. I have updated the report with your new information and for reference it is UE-11446. I will keep you informed as we work to a solution.

Thank You Again -

Eric Ketchum

Thanks so very much for the attention! Have a great day!

I know this is a very old thread, but I am still encountering this issue in 4.15 and the referenced ticket was closed as “cannot reproduce.” I don’t know about the original more general problem described in the ticket, but this specific “lights disappear far from the origin” problem is definitely still relevant for me.

There was another bug entered that was closed due to inactivity and how it has not been urgent for many of our developers.

I can reopen the ticket internally, but I cannot guarantee it will get a high priority.

Thank you,

I’m also encountering the same bug. It would be nice if you could reopen the issue as it looks like it is closed again. I need to be able to move lights arround on my game and I’m currently using an orthographic camera. I’m working on a Rogue Lite-Dungeon Crawler game and I need the lighting to be consistent to be used on the room discovery system :smiley: Thanks

Sorry to bump this thread 3 years after the last response
but I’m still encountering this problem in 4.27.

I also noticed the cameramanager camera being spawned at 0,0,0, but even if that is removed and the cameramanager is attached to my PC, the problem persists.

I really want to avoid switching to a perspective camera.