@Blake Hey Blake, I met another issue with my particles and it is related to removing thin instances. Since you came up with using thin instances in your post the first time, I just wanna ping you this time to see if you have any ideas on this? I already posted my question as a new topic in the forum, the link is here How can I preserve variable values in GUI slider.onValueChangedObservable method?.
If you have time, could you take a look at it and give me some suggestions.