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[Renzatic]

It's cuz Id placed the light emitter at the end of the cone and gave it a small radius to save on performance. So instead of it casting a cone out like a real flashlight would, it's more like you're dangling a lantern on a stick.

[sparhawk]

My impression was that the shadows are simply extruded copies of the geometry the light isfalling on and then placed with a displacement. When I did the test with that railing it behaved exactly like this.

[Ishtvan]

When you shoot a fire arrow you'll see shadows from a dynamic light source moving around like you'd expect. The flashlight doesn't seem to behave this way, so I'm inclined to agree that they used some sort of performance saving method here. Perhaps it is a collimated cyllinder light Renz is saying. They just have it look like it's expanding out in a cone with some trick of textures, but actually all the light propagation vectors are in the same direction. So you just see a projection of the geometry on the far wall as if you're hitting it with a cyllinder of same-directed light, and the cyllinder radius is determined by how far the 'fake' light cone has spread. I dunno, just a guess.

[sparhawk]

When I looked at it, it always seemed to have the same extruding no matter where I was.

[Domarius]

I remember, in playing Doom 3, that the reflection of the flashlight was inconsistent with it's "actual" pointing.

If you looked closely, its because in the "reflection" world on the other side of the mirror, the Doom 3 Marine model is being used to represent you, and he has his own flashlight, which is fixed to his hand, and therefore the flashlight spot on the wall in the reflection world follows the movements HIS hand makes - it waves around in a strange way as he sways on the spot. It only points in the general direction you're faceing because the Doom3 Marine model rotates to face the way you are as well.