Personally, I use Asphyre for my projects.

I tried (Un)DelhiX and GLScene before but in my opinion, Asphyre is a very great free framework which is still under development.

But using Asphyre assumes using Delphi.

The community found a way to integrate the Asphyre components to the free Turbo Delphi version. So this may be a start if you decide to use Asphyre without spending money on a new compiler.

To start, I can advise to download the latest Asphyre-package and take a look at the demos, especially Vulcano, Landscape and Combustion demo. They are included as executables, so even without Delphi you can take a look at them to get an idea about the (already included) particle system of Asphyre.

Let me know when you took a look at it.

Greetings,
Dirk

ASPYHRE homepage:

http://www.afterwarp.net