I've been using P7 for quite some time, and I could swear I remember light sets ("universal" ambient light, outdoor lights, etc) that use a crapton of lights. The other day I tried to set up a tavern with point lights at all the candles/torches/etc, and the 9th light simply doesn't work. It appears, and I can pose it and set its parameters, but it will not actually emit light until I delete one of the others. Tried this again today with a light set that already contains 10 lights and, as far as I know, they all work. Added one point light and it refused to shed any light until I got rid of three of the others. What in the world is going on, can anyone tip me off?

OpenGL in poser is limited to the first 8 lights

That has been the case since poser introduced OpenGL

And it's only a preview problem.

Aha! Thank you both very much. I've used the same light set where it didn't matter for so long that I just had no recollection of anything like this, so grateful for the info!

even more precise: the lights which have the "Include in openGL preview" property ticked get priority first, and the brightest lights get priority within and after that. From this ordered list, you'll get the top eight. Haven't tested it in detail yet though.

Quote - even more precise: the lights which have the "Include in openGL preview" property ticked get priority first, and the brightest lights get priority within and after that. From this ordered list, you'll get the top eight. Haven't tested it in detail yet though.

That is only in the latest versions of poser. Earlier versions it is just the 1st 8 lights

All lights have "include in OpenGL preview" set by default. You have to explicitly turn off the less important lights. In a setup with 20 point lights, turn off some of the ones close to others.

yeah correct, the ordering by brightness is quite new but I was using the Include.. option for some time now. The behavior changed too, that is: PoserPro really switches lights off in the preview when unchecked, no matter how many lights there are. Just tested. I recall (but my be in error) that earlier versions still showed lights having the option unticked when there were less than 8 lights with the option ON.

So the new version is: the preview shows the eight brightest lights which have the option ticked.

Older versions might read: the preview shows the first eight lights with priority to the ones which have the option ticked

or even: the preview shows the first eight lights.

I think the OpenGL option in lights was introduced in P8 (that is why I said versions), but I don't have 7 installed anymore, so I can't check.

With the improvement of the HW Shading better previews was needed so they changed the priority in which lights (and shadows) were displayed in the preview.