Ambient light is darker than the number should be

Using 1,1,1,1 gives me a very dark ambient light. Shouldn’t this be full-bright? I have to turn it up to about 5,5,5 to get pure white. I am not using any materials or textures on this.

bank=CreateBank(16)
PokeFloat bank,0,1.0
PokeFloat bank,4,1.0
PokeFloat bank,8,1.0
PokeFloat bank,12,1.0
glLightModelfv GL_LIGHT_MODEL_AMBIENT,bank
FreeBank bank

Oh I see.

To get the lights to just behave normally, you have to set the material to 1,1,1 ambient and 1,1,1 diffuse. Specular I can understand, but I would have thought that they would just behave normally by default, instead of darkening the light.