Just had a mess with LightConeAngles and they beat me too, tbh. No matter what I set them to, it doesn't seem to make a blind bit of difference.
Anyway, I doubt a spotlight is what you want for this effect, Stevie - they're ugly.
Fredborg's effect looks like a set of additive blended, concentric cylinders whose alpha decreases towards the outer cylinder. I guess the 'cheapest' way to do this would be to combine the cylinders into a single mesh and use vertex alpha, instead of having a separate mesh/surface for each cylinder.
[edit]It also looks like fredborg is graduating the vertex alpha from 0 (at the top of the cylinder) to max_alpha_for_this_cyclinder (at the bottom). Except for the central cylinder, which appears to have full alpha strength throughout.
Anyway, I doubt a spotlight is what you want for this effect, Stevie - they're ugly.
Fredborg's effect looks like a set of additive blended, concentric cylinders whose alpha decreases towards the outer cylinder. I guess the 'cheapest' way to do this would be to combine the cylinders into a single mesh and use vertex alpha, instead of having a separate mesh/surface for each cylinder.
[edit]It also looks like fredborg is graduating the vertex alpha from 0 (at the top of the cylinder) to max_alpha_for_this_cyclinder (at the bottom). Except for the central cylinder, which appears to have full alpha strength throughout.