Most efficient way to spawn particles

Hey there!

I've been playing around with particles through packets, and everything has gone fine, except one thing; it is really resourceheavy. What is the most efficient way to constantly follow particles after a player, with no visible lag? When I choose to have one tick, it is still a bit behind the player when I walk or run. Is there a way to make it even faster? Would the most efficient way be to run it in another thread, maybe?

Currently, I use a scheduler to run it every tick, but this is really heavy, even with only one person. Also, when there are too many particles, they start to despawn. Is it possible to do any of these things;

a) make every single particle bigger without combining them with more or,
b) increase particlelimit on the server?

 

@jimbo8 Show the particle only to players in a range (and also don't show them if the player is in a different world).