On 12/02/2011 05:16 PM, clipka wrote:
> - The historic area_light code is only designed to generate soft
> shadows; other effects (highlights and - as in your case -
> distance-based light fading) remain as per a standard point light. (The
> area_illumination switch introduced with 3.7 does fix this for
> highlights, but not for distance fading yet.)

   And the reason why area_illumination is not always on (at least 
currently) is that it makes rendering of area lights a bit slower. In 
most scenes its effects would be unnoticeable, so the extra rendering 
time would be wasted. It's only when the area light is relatively close 
to a surface (ie. so close that the diffuse/specular illumination would 
visibly differ from that of a point light) that it makes a visible 
difference.

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