by combinations I mean that symbols have parameters, like shape type, size, filled or hollow, etc…
defintely I’ll do them on the fly, since glTexImage2D just takes what you give, pehaps the user may create its own symbol so no practical use of the texture file…
about the masked texture, I don’t know about the alpha test, I’m still newbie at GL, I havce to study it, I was reading on Nehe tutorial # 20, which is about masked textures that you can do it with blending… for your texture, you need to have its mask which is a black and white image, black where the solid part is and white for trasnparent, first you set glBlendFunc( GL_DST_COLOR, GL_ZERO ); and draw the masked texture on a quad, then set glBlendFunc( GL_ONE, GL_ONE ); and draw the original texture, looks fine to me, but then I’ll have to find a way for generating the texture mask on the fly as well… does the alpha test do the same at the end next to this blend approach??, what do you suggest me ?
btw, I already tried glBitmap, not too bad at all, though the graphic operations (rotate, pan) slow down… but at least does not dies… maybe becasuse I use a display list… so, next to this way, is the texture quad much more faster ?, how much ?
the other pro I see on glBitmap is that I specify the origin of the symbol in 3D world, which is what I want, if I do on an ortho2D view with texture quad I might have to convert every point to screen coords right ?
ok, many thanks again for taking the time to reply.