For continuous beams to look good, you are limited to shape="straight". This is because continuousBeam stretches the effect, and it makes other shapes like oval look ugly and less visible.

Unfortunately, combining style="grainy" and shape="straight" results in a mostly smooth laser beam. So far, only "wavy" and "jagged" (and, of course, "smooth") styles seem to combine with shape="straight" well enough, but none of them have that insubstantial and/or particle dotted appearance that particle beams tend to have. Using "lightning" crashes the game. In short, all of the viable effects for continuous beams appear as solid beams.

It would also be nice to have shimmering particle and straight flickering lightningBolt from old-fashioned <Beam> effects available in <Ray> form.