https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Dirt_Path

In DirtPath, walking and every vehicle leave the same amount of "wear". I have forked DirtPath (my fork is called "Desire Paths") and made a change so that heavier vehicles leave a more-worn trail. You can see the work here: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/desire_paths

My question is: How is Vehicle Trails different from DirtPath, or DesirePaths for that matter.

It creates small particles for short time.

So is it actually a particle effect? Or is it a particle-effect sprite you apply over the ground?

My mod and DirtPath achieve the effect by swapping out the ground sprite with progressively darker, more worn variants.

I know your mod :) Very nice idea and neat realization.

The reason I ask is I could not get your mod to work as expected. I tried several vehicles but I never saw any particle tracks.

After some vanilla update it doesn't work as before (on the screenshots).