An interesting application of particle systems/ billboarding.

The last "modern" demo that really made me draw my breath was Heaven 7. Realtime raytracing done nearly 7 years ago (though released in 2000). Brilliant stuff. Oh, and no OpenGL used here either. All graphics and sound libraries were hand coded.

Get it here:

http://users.tpg.com.au/edjenny/Dani...c/h7-final.zip