This is about a Roll20 feature exclusive to Pro-subscribers (and often to players in a Game created by a Pro-subscriber). If you'd like to use this feature, consider upgrading your account.

Updated Dynamic Lighting (aka. UDL) is the new version of the Roll20 lightning system that is meant to replace Advanced Fog of War and Dynamic Lighting, combining them into a single, unified system. It features a stronger framework for future feature enhancements, is more performative, and has been updated for more current computing technologies. The old system is referred to as Legacy Dynamic Lighting (LDL).

In UDL, the old features of Advanced Fog of War have been renamed Explorer Mode to avoid confusion. Updated Dynamic Lighting uses WebGL, which is available in most computer systems and is supported by all the web browsers that Roll20 supports (Chrome and Firefox). The Legacy Dynamic Lighting has always used WebGL, so the change here is that Explorer Mode (previously Advanced Fog of War) now runs on the same system.

UDL was released on April 8th, 2020 as opt-in feature for Pro/Plus users, after having been available over a month on the Dev Server for Pro subs to try out.

On July 30th, 2020, UDL reached Feature Parity with LDL, but still have issues and optimization to do before it becomes superior to the LDL on all aspects.

Official Documentation

UDL was created after Roll20 had moved their Official documentation to the Helpdesk, so the Community Wiki doesn't have duplicates of these articles, so these features have better pages there:

• Updated Dynamic Lighting - Helpdesk article
• Updated Dynamic Lighting - Vision Examples - Helpdesk article
• Updated Dynamic Lighting API Support - Helpdesk article

Parallel Systems

Currently UDL exist in parallel with the Legacy Dynamic Lighting(LDL) until all issues are resolved, even though it reached feature parity on July 30th. Users will be warned well in advance when LDL will be phased out so people have time to adjust.

While we continue development on Updated Dynamic Lighting and support for licensed products, both the Legacy system and the Updated will exist in parallel. However, when you switch from one to another, the revealed areas are not transferred over. So, for example, if you and your crew have been crawling through a dungeon with Advanced Fog of War on, and you decide to switch to the new Dynamic Lighting with Explorer Mode, your players won't see anything they had previously explored. Players can fix that by moving their tokens around to re-reveal the area.

Similarly, if you switch to Explorer Mode and then decide to hop back over to the Legacy system, anything you had revealed in the UDL system will be reset/hidden when changing to LDL. If you then switch back to the UDL, the revealed areas that you had revealed when you last used UDL(might?) still be there.

The Dynamic Lighting layer, where you can add barriers that block light and movement, continues to function for both systems, and you do not need to change anything on that layer.

On August 6th, the Convert Lighting Tool was released, making it possible to convert existing games to UDL automatically.

Features

• Explorer Mode
• Darkness Tool
• Convert Lighting

Page

Main Page: Page Toolbar

UDL Page Settings - Roll20 Help Center

Token

Main Page: Token Features

UDL Token Settings - Roll20 Help Center

Known Issues

The UDL Bug thread lists the Known Issues & what is currently worked on, and this section replicates it.

(list updated August 17th 2020)

Known Issues List:

• Performance Improvements
  • Some pages with Updated Dynamic Lighting are not loading properly
  • Improvements to loading times and responsiveness
  • Dynamic Lighting lines appear jagged [ 1 ]
  • Lag build-up with keyboard movement (Especially for multiple token movement and large maps) [ 1, 2 ]
  • Certain users are experiencing memory spikes and high memory usage
• Improvements to Night Vision
  • Night Vision aesthetics with multiple tokens are overlapped.
  • Objects on GM Layer disappear when tokens with Night Vision overlap them [ 1, 2, 3 ]
• Rotation handle for groups does not work when Updated Dynamic Lighting is enabled 1
• Visual artifacts while using Explorer mode with integrated graphics on MacOS
• Zoom Interactions
  • levels interacts with "Pixel dust" and Explorer mode
  • Dynamic Lighting creates distorted duplicates
• Ghost-like effect for animated tokens in GM view with Night VisionNightvision or Explorer mode
• Yellow box missing when hovering over Turn Order entry for UDL enabled tokens [ 1 ]
• When a GM moves a player token, the GM does not see reveal areas until drop
• Vision or lighting sometimes appears as a cone without changes to Directional Light/Vision being made

Fixed issues:

• • full list of solved issues

See Also

• UDL Legacy Sunset - Feedback/Bug Report Thread
• UDL Known Issues List Legacy Sunset phase (August 17th ->)

Blog Posts

• A New Light The Conversion Tool is Now Live! (August 6th,2020)
• A New Light A New Path Ahead UDL reached Feature Parity with LDL (July 30th, 2020)
• A New Light UDL is released (April 8th 2020)