As deomnstrated here: Particle Thruster fx - UE4 + Photoshop + 3dsmax - YouTube
Would this sprite sheet-like method of particle creation be less resource intensive than a whole particle system where you’d create a fire and then pass it through a vector field?
Secondly, which would be more realistic? I’ve been thinking of creating a thruster system of sorts using the completely-from-scratch particle system method as well as replicate the exact effect using this sprite-like effect. The two separate particle systems are for high-end graphics and low-end graphics settings BUT only if using a sprite sheet actually has resource-use benefits as opposed to a complete system. If it does, I’d just create a sprite-sheet based particle system alongside complete systems and switch to all sprite-based systems when setting to lower graphic settings in games.