FoNtS

Hello!
I’ve heard that using HFONT to write some text in applications is slow. This the method used in the earliest NeHe tutorials. But is writing with fonts taken from the picture file faster really? In both methods you use display lists to store characters. So what’s the difference though?

There is a diffrence between bitmap, vector, and textured fonts and how it is processed by the video card.

OpenGL and 3D video hardware is made to be fast at doing 3D operations.
So when you work with 2D pixel operations directly to the screen, you cause a slow down due to the overhead of doing two operations; 3D hardware processing data and then the Pixel operation after the 3D processing.

If you use text that is made up of vertex’s or Textured mapped text, it all get’s the fast processing of the 3D hardware in one operation to the screen.

Originally posted by Orzech:
Hello!
I’ve heard that using HFONT to write some text in applications is slow. This the method used in the earliest NeHe tutorials. But is writing with fonts taken from the picture file faster really? In both methods you use display lists to store characters. So what’s the difference though?

Ow, I see. I’ll go for textured fonts then. But does the raster font really decreases a performance of an application, for example if I just use it to draw fps so I don’t use it too much? It isn’t hard to code bitmap fonts functions but raster fonts just looks better.

Thanks!!!

Orzech