Facelight is one of the secrets of a good look in second life. For those of you that are still living without it, it's a transparent, invisible prim, floating in the air somewhere in front of your face and emitting light. It makes you always shine and, more important, it keeps those ugly face shadows away. As a side effect, it is quite useful in corridors, alleys, sewers an other dark places. But, simple as it is, it actually can make your life look quite miserable.
As said, facelight is one prim. or, it should be. So many times, in the moments just after teleporting, while textures are still rezzing and all is gray, you can see people with several spheres around their heads. Sometimes it's one, sometimes three of them, sometimes they look like a model of a Solar system. In a second or two, the spheres will disappear and start lighting their faces.
So were is the problem? Problem is that due to the OpenGL specs SL client renders only six light sources. Those six that are closest to the specific avatar. And if you have three facelights, there is only three more for the rest of what you see. So, you see most of the other faces with shadows, you have a bad look of the building around you. Don't forget that the artist that made the building probably needed some lights for it. And you are also "stealing" available light sources from the avatars closest to you.
And, there is no much difference in being lighted by three instead of one light source. Not unless you are making a photo and know exactly what you want to achieve with all those lights.
So, you can stay beautiful and shiny with one-prim facelight. Don't ruin your and other's experiences with all those spheres around you. Please.
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