Lighting

Why there is a limited number of availble light sources that can be used into scene, and is there any way to avoid this limitation?

There are practical limits to what cost effective hardware can provide in a fixed function pipeline. In addition times have changed and the minimum requirements for lights were set at 8 a decade ago. So the limit is not absolute it is a minimum requirement for OpenGL conformance.

glgetintegerv with a GL_MAX_LIGHTS token will tell you how many lights are supported, with a minimum of 8 guaranteed by OpenGL.

This presentation and example code by Mark Kilgard shows how to squeeze more lights into a scene than the available OpenGL lights:
http://www.opengl.org/resources/code/rendering/mjktips/VirtualizedLights/Virtua lizedLights.html

[This message has been edited by dorbie (edited 03-03-2004).]