Ok,

The pictures of what is happening now and what I want to happen are already in this thread. I want ship to look like #1 whether its turning or going straight.

Its a problem because we ARE setting the correct variable to begin with, but the particles acceleration accelerates away from the ship in the incorrect way. I'm stumped as to what I set p.vel_x,y,z so it always accelerates straight instead of curving like it does in the pictures.

I cant think of any way to make a cloud of particles behave like
a solid block of dots. If I understand you.

The particles 'appear' curving because they are moving straight, but the
ship and camera have moved away on a curve.

Forgive me for explaining the obvious, but its something that can be
mis-understood about how particles behave.

That's all I needed to hear, that it couldn't be done. I understand why the particles were curving, I was just trying to stop it!

Maybe you could attach an animated sprite to the engine vertiex instead.

EvilSOB your a GENIUS! I'll try that out ASAP and let you know!

Hello, I think you have to transform the global world velocity vector into the local coordinate system of your entity. My problem was a laser beam shot from my entity to target in a global view.

My solution:

function effect_laser_beam(PARTICLE* p)
{
// set beam in player`s direction
p.vel_x = vec_length(p.x)*cos(player.pan);
p.vel_y = vec_length(p.x)*sin(player.pan);
p.vel_z = 0;

// set lenght of beam
vec_normalize (p.vel_x, random(100));
......

Lol, that thread is outdated. Look at the date, 1st February 2009. Read the date first, please.

also Lol, your right, should have better look. But the problem might exist today. I spend a lot of hours to solve it and thought it may be helpfull.