Before in many versions of V-Ray since like 2009 we could instance vray lights. I noticed in the recent updates (tried testing the latest build) and now maya spits out this error message;
// Error: Light instances are not supported //
The outliner seems to contain the lights and they work, but it doesn’t appear in the viewport.
It’s not a problem with speed - it’s just that we used to control temps and intensity of whole carparks/offices etc with one single instanced light which was really useful.
I guess there are workarounds though (by using ramps to control multiple non instanced lights in future). Thanks for explaining what’s going on.