At the request of a community member, adding prior establishment that the ability to do these directional lights is already in the engine.

May also wish to apply volumetric effects to directional lights that are spawned in this way (such as flashlights) or enable the API support to drive them "on" or "off".
https://feedback.bistudio.com/T65741

Directional lights also need to create a small amount of off-axis illumination based on reflections and the light sourcing:

Tilion confirmed the functionality exists in the engine in July 2013:
https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/146430-reflector-lights/#entry2372239

Tilion confirmed the functionality exists in the engine in July 2013:
https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/146430-reflector-lights/#entry2372239

Tilion confirmed the functionality exists in the engine in July 2013:
https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/146430-reflector-lights/#entry2372239

Reproduced and verified. Adding screenshots.

If you have created an ally chopper and assigned it to the group, by default there is a pilot or pilot(s) which you are ordering to disembark. I would suggest that in most cases, this behavior is working as designed.

Typically in the editor, you would have to override this behavior by using scripting in the init of the chopper to remove the pilots from the chopper in order for this to have a chance of being an actual bug. In which case, its difficult to understand why the group association between a ground unit and a chopper.

Most scenarios I can think of, you would probably instead use an empty chopper, which you could then order as needed.

Help me understand what I am missing here?

Roger, there are almost always a small number of graphical assets which other threads put into vRAM on the GPU. Think windows assets. My suggestion would be to use your Max RAM minus 512MB if you are using aero, if you are not, then minus 384MB.

Can you try this and see if it resolves your crash?