Sorry perhaps I misunderstood your exact requirement on that one.
Any such lighting effect would I would have though only require change of its size in relation to player distance as it would do so naturally in real life according to the laws of perspective, (although that may not be what you require). i.e. the further away the player the smaller any fixed sized object will appear even in FPSC.
If you actually want to force a physical change in the size dynamically tied to player distance that would be rather difficult in FPSC - but not impossible perhaps.
Achieving that with a decal would be difficult as although you can change the size either in the animated decal or perhaps even the physical size of the decal via script - its difficult to control that in its relation to player proximity. The animated decal in FPSC also has a fixed speed - one speed - too fast so any great fluctuations in size would look pretty awful and the decals are not that hot at even in the best of circumstances.
It may be possible to similarly animate a dynamic entiity model and morph its size over specific frame ranges to be specified in script - the various frame ranges being called dependant upon player proximity as with many other FPSC dynamic entity objects. You cannot apply an animated texture (until someones proves differently) so thats out of the question.
Not sure what possible - only much experimentation would confirm if anything of this nature is possible at all and if so how successful it might be. Not very I would asume as FPSC is not very flexible at all with non default experimentations, although workarounds and trickery can be partially successful at least in implimentation if not quality.
Anyone know or tried animated gif in FPSC applied to anything at all. I have not but have considered it recently. If it would suport gif of any kind then that might be helpful in various circumstances as gif support should extend to animated gif with transparency.
Ceratinly this would require some hard work and its success likely to be limited.
In FPSC there is little chance in many instances of achieving anything that goes against the grain of the default engine support or recognition capabilities with a likely quality outcome - thats the main thing even when something can be done. If TGC cant do better than the current poor decal option for such special effects then theres little cahnce we will have much better success.
In truth these and all other things need true support in the engine and theirs no real other option - its down to TGC to give the users better or add implimentation for such effects which add another level of professionalism to gamemaking possibilities.
Water, particles, fog (yes I seen the fog thingy) animated textures - all these and many other things are best done and most easily achieved by the developers without any question of doubt.
That does not stop users trying to push the bounds with what we've got and many do and are doing their very best.
It takes a brave person to take on FPSC when it dont support something you want to achieve.
I would help further by doing some experimentation if I had the time, but my work with FPSC is mapped out and deviation sidetracks everything which is already a long arduuous job and nothing gets finished, so I will get around to more and more things as and when I need to try achieve them even if I fail which is more than likely.
I wish you luck with that.
Personally I would stick to the simple quality transparent texture applied to an entity of one kind or another - change of size on relative distance and perspective as it would seem to me that thats natural, better at least than a poorly implimented alternative.
If you want to have a go at some kind of animated change of effect though you may surprise us all.
sorry I cant help further - I just dont know the answers till I try it.
EDIT : By the way those pictures that you show with the corona only seem to show normal perspective of objects but then we cant see if the are animated or not - my original point being - Yes as far as I see them you can achieve the same appearance on a corona as that which is shown therein.
