Lock object is NOT the only way.
Personally,and contrarly to other people,I use sprites even on top of 3D...My card does allow lots of them without degradation of performances.
Advantages of Plains/Planes:Faster(for most),uses the filtering on the texture,can be used in 3d space in other ways like fading,hiding and better looking code-animations
Disadvantages of plain:Textures come out destroyed(IMHO)
use text on a plain texture you'll see what I mean,The coordinate system is in 3d so you need a little playing to position it or make a function that'll convert them to 2D screen coordinates,you'll also need to code it effectively(using collisions or distance) so it doesn't go through objects and the rest.
Advantages of Sprites,2D on-screen coordinates,Textures/images come out almost as clean as they are on the BMP,DBPro loves them and has many related commands
Disadvantages of SPRITES:Slow as hell!!! on many 3d cards(even some recent ones)
Since my card supports them quite good over 3D,I'm sticking with the solution withless disadvantages...I'm not saying I'm not using any plains though,just what I want to look/come out better
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour!
