glDrawPixels help; glDrawPixels vs. Texture Mapping for bitmaps

[vorbisus]

I hate to have to ask this, because it seems like it ought to be quite easy. I just can get glDrawPixels to display anything on the screen.
I use glDrawPixels(256,256,GL_COLOR_INDEX,GL_BITMAP,(uns igned char*)bitmapdata);
I get nothing. What should be equivalent code based on MSDN help: glBitmap(256,256,0,0,0,0,(unsigned char*)bitmapdata); works... sort of. I can use it display data with 1-bit color information (display white pixels on a black background).
My data is RGBA format.
My question is, am I missing some kind of initialization? Does anyone have a tutorial for using glDrawPixels and/or glBitmap?
I can't find this in NeHe or the Redbook... my best resources.
And... the second part of my question:
I can get TextureMapping to work, and display a Quad at the appropriate distance for viewing the bitmap... but it seems to me, though I could be wrong, that this wouldn't be nearly as fast as a Block Transfer of the pixels. Both should be supported by hardware. Also, other threads on this forum are saying that Texturing to a quad is lossy... does anyone know the performance different between glDrawPixels, and Texture Mapping? (assuming glDrawPixels uses hardware Blting).

Thanks in advance.
Mike.

[Relic]

"My data is RGBA format."
Ehm, then why do you specify GL_COLOR_INDEX and GL_BITMAP? http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/wink.gif
Try glDrawPixels(width, height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, bitmapdata);

If the data is not changing, downloading it as a texture and repeatedly displaying as textured quad should be faster. That's the most used case for backdrops and such.

[vorbisus]

Well, OK... I see your point. The very first thing I tried was just as you say, like so: glDrawPixels(256,256,GL_RGBA,GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,(uns igned char*)bitmapdata);
Exactly like that. Nothing displayed on the string, and then I tried glBitmap. glBitmap appeared to be reading the data, but it was reading it with 1-bit color information. I couldn't figure out how to use color information with glBitmap. I looked in the MSDN documentation, and it claimed glBitmap should be almost identical to glDrawPixels with those options selected. So I was trying to use that as a starting point, and fix the color format later.
Either way, I can't get glDrawPixels to actually display on the screen.
I'm having trouble following the documentation here... do I have to do anything with the frame buffer after calling glDrawPixels, as opposed to glBitmap, to actually get it to display?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike.

[Gavin]

No.
Just check the obvious.....
you are malloc'ing 256*256*4*GLubyte
just before the glDraw pixels.... loop through *bitmapdata to check you have correct values in there.

I just set up a gluortho2d display.
read in my bmp file
(just in case) set....
glRasterPos2i(0, 0);
glDrawPixels(256, 256, GL_RGB, GLubyte, myimage);

try making a test image (not read in data) like...
count=0;

for(y=0;y<256;y++)
for(x=0;x<256;x++)
for(rgb=0;rgb<3;rgb++)
myimage[count++] = x;

gav

[vorbisus]

Got what I needed...
Like Gavin said.... check the obvious.
It works now... but I still can't figure out why it didn't before... must have made a mistake somewhere.
Thanks for the help.
Mike.