Struggling with flare effects

[Jwh]

I'm making a map with big flood lights to cast shadows over the docks below. The problem is, I want to give the lights big lens flares and I can't do it quite right. When I'm close up to it, the effect is too small, and besides that since I'm putting my light inside the brush I have to mark the polys around it portal/transparent/translucent to be able to see the flare at all, making it look uglier. Right now I'm using the "white star" type flare on a point light. Any suggestions as to how I could do this better?

[HighMaintenance]

The white star is your best bet. Standard reflections shows up in almost all conditions. It is very large and obvious with red tinges to it though.

What I found with the flares is that if you get inside their sphere of influence the flare effect disappears. I think that is what you describe as "get close and it gets too small". THe only one that might stay is standard reflections.

You might try turning the hotspot to be as large as the falloff. That makes the flare the brightest.

[Jwh]

Well, I've thought of a few solutions to my problem.

I could just ignore having any flares, but that would look wrong.

I could make lots of little lights right next to the texture instead of putting the light inside and using the illumination property, but that would be a pain and might cause performance problems for some.

I could leave it be, sorta half-working.

I could make my own flare sprite and use that, but it wouldn't look as good and it would be annoying to do.

I'm sure there's a better way than what I know of.

[MrSelfDestruct]

I'm not really a mapper, but couldn't you have a second light right on top of the first, with lens-flare only checked, and then set up the fall-off for that?

[Jwh]

I figured out my problem. Fog makes your flares small. After some reworking I have a balance between thick fog and decent-looking flares.