I do think this is a bug. I just had to make a quickie animation of a birthday cake. I made my own candle and chucked on a fire element. I only edit in one window but as I spun the cake around and did spot renders, the fire only showed up on the front view. Since this was an animation and I did not have anytime to play with it, I just made a stupid flame in the spline room and put on a glow :) If anyone finds anything about this please post up.