There is no general standard when it comes to particle engines or games engines for that matter. Only the API on which it is written (DirectX, HLSL, OpenGL, etc…). In most cases the technology created to render effects like particles are usually driven by the game’s requirements and specs.

A good developer always thinks in advance in order to maintain OOP and flexibility. Since Point Sprites are no longer supported by directX (no support in DX 10, 11 and 12) you can be sure hardware support will be limited with new iterations. Even when they were supported through hardware and DirectX 9, there were issues with how the hardware handled Point Sprites, particularly scaling in my situation.

The only "real" advantages of Point Sprites are that the hardware automatically transformed them to always face the camera and a smaller CPU footprint, but looking forward you can accomplish the same thing with geometry shaders – giving you a lot more flexibility.

For me, the "to use or not to use Point Sprites" is a no brainer but I cannot speak for you as I do not know your target hardware, requirements, or expectations.


Regards.

What they use in most games out there to create particles (point sprite or 4 vertices quad)?

Is it possible to make the particles always face the camera through code?

Can you post example?