I’m really surprised lights used to simulate sunrise placed 20-30ft away could completely melt the foam holding the exterior windows in place.
Some productions can bring out 10K lamps and larger. They definitely get H O T.
That's as much heat as some electric stovetops produce.
Focusing a light, while still leaving the falloff ""spherical"", makes it so the center of the sphere is not at the light source, it's a virtual point significantly behind it. With a narrow beam, being 1 meter from the light and 10 meters from the light might only be 2x different in brightness, or even less.
And for lights with significant width, you drift away from spherical falloff the closer you are and the wider they are. As you get quite close, and the light fills a lot of your field of view, you approach the situation of an infinite wall of light and that has linear falloff.
These lights are huge and wide and can have tight beam angles.
Infinite line of light has linear falloff.
You’ll often see those giant fans blowing all over the stage. It’s not just for big hair stances, it’s to keep humans alive.
On sets, less humans, more space, so the lights heat will dissipate pretty well after 5-10 feet. However I suspect that a simulator that is simulating the sun using a physical lamp would be using higher power lights to mimic the suns bloom. Even keeping it within operating normals it will get hot.