   XNA particle system
  Hy!I'm working on a GPU computed 3D particle system (a very simple one). How can I do that? I've tried to store the particle data position, velocity, ... in textures, but to translate a particle I need to access that texture in my vertex shader code, but that is not possible in D3D9 vshader 3.0 version. I was thinking of use of Vertex textures, but after some reading I've realized that ATi cards (for ex. my MobilityRadeon X1600XT) do not support Vertex textures, and render to vertex buffer is not supported in XNA.Any ideas?   
  Without one of those two features, you'll have to get the CPU involved somewhere although it could be as simple as copying data out of a texture and into a vertex buffer.Alternatively base the particle position simply off some initial parameters and a time variable, so you avoid the need to feed back the results from the last frame into the calculations for the next frame. For example:position = initial_position + (initial_velocity * time) + (acceleration * time * time)   ;Quote:Original post by Adam_42Without one of those two features, you'll have to get the CPU involved somewhere although it could be as simple as copying data out of a texture and into a vertex buffer.Alternatively base the particle position simply off some initial parameters and a time variable, so you avoid the need to feed back the results from the last frame into the calculations for the next frame. For example:position = initial_position + (initial_velocity * time) + (acceleration * time * time)I think it should be:position = initial_position + (initial_velocity * time) + (acceleration * time * time / 2)   ;  The sample on the creators club page does exactly what you are trying to do, you might want to take a look at that.http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/particle3d   