🔒 Locked

Fastest text display method

Started by Aargyle May 6, 2003 at 2:35 PM 3 replies 700+ views

Original Post

May 6, 2003 at 2:35 PM

I was wondering what the fastest way to display text is. I am currently using the bitmap fonts from NeHe''s tutorial #13, but I noticed that they seem to drop my FPS pretty quickly. I also noticed that they are being used like a display list, which tells me they might have a bunch of polyogns for each letter! Is there a faster way to do text on the screen for an interface? Also what is a good framerate when nothing is being drawn? I am getting about 350 FPS when I draw nothing but the framerate counter, but I''ve seen people talking about much higher FPS when you draw nothing. I''m running a 1.33 GHz athlon with a geforce 3. Thanks!

JtM

May 6, 2003 at 11:39 PM

I''m using a singleton class based on the nehe bitmap fonts tutorial (thanks to whoever made it :D) and it doesn''t seem to effect the fps noticably. Since your using opengl the only other option than using polygons to display text (as far as I know) would be to write straight to the screen buffer some how (I think you can do this in SDL) but I''m not sure if that would help.

Also you should be aware that the more fps you have (i.e. when you draw nothing) the greater impact any sort of drawing operation is going to have on it. This isn''t a problem since your fps drops will start to level off at some particular point and should be plenty fast for todays monitors and eyeballs.

Btw I''m making a clone of an asteriods-like game that came with the vetrex, it runs at about 3000fps :D If i turn on v-sync it''s 89 so i''m guessing it''s accurate.

Aargyle

May 6, 2003 at 11:56 PM

Lol 3000 FPS. Thats whats scaring me, I only get like 350 when I draw nothing. But maybe you have three times the processor that I do

Anyway I just realized that my skybox cuts my fps in half, down to 150. Gotta work on that! Its only 5 quads... but they fill the whole screen I guess.

JtM

May 7, 2003 at 12:00 AM

Have you tried profiling? Other than that I would say just wait a bit and see if your fps doesn''t reach some kind of limiting value (within reason). My game btw, is only drawing white lines to represent the game object (ala asteriods) and I have an AthlonXP1800 +GeForce4ti4200. Thats quite a lot of hardware going behind a game that can be played on a graphics calculator :D

Aargyle

May 7, 2003 at 12:03 AM

Yeah I will have to try that. Yay for the high precision timer!

Anyone know how many textured lit triangles you can display on a geforce3 at 60 FPS? heheheh.

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.