D3D Sprite

D3D Sprites are really 2d sprites, but use 3d hardware acceleration if it's available, through Direct3D 7.0, that made some special effects not available with DirectDraw, like deformation, perspective correction, color layer, sprite blending. A sprite 3d is formed with two vertex on this way, and can take some strange texture deformations.

 p1         p2
   --------- 
   |      /| 
   |    /  | 
   |  /    | 
   |/      | 
   --------- 
 p3         p4