ize: you made a very nice demo, but that wasn't the problem, the problem is that ideally i would only have half of pipe, which always faces the camera and uv mapping along the length of the pipe / cylinder like this screenshot:



Your code is good and it could be likely easily changed for the uv mapping method (if we use normal face culling for this then maybe the uv mapping could be just projected somehow and rear faces culled off?)

I will produce a video from old game to show what exactly i meant, the UV mapped side follows the camera source, so that the phasers look as if they are volumetric, the uv mapping also animates along phaser path towards the target.

The phasers have a smaller taper / radius at the origin, on the screenshots i set that to actual diameter of the rest of phaser so that the inner structure was more obviously seen.

I will get a video by the end of the day to show exactly how it works.