It''s not really a problem, but it''s about performance... I''ve tried the 13th tutorial. Printing only the FPS to the screen offers me a rate of ~700 frames/s. Then I wrote only one line of text (~20 chars)... and I got a performance loss of about 200 frames! Why? Is it to slow to use bitmap-fonts? Is it better to use texture-fonts like in lesson 17? Or is there another (undocumented) way to print text?

I don´t know for sure, but maybe your graphic card can´t handle frame buffer operations.

Gandalf the White

When you send bitmaps directly to the frame buffer, any queued command in the 3d driver has to be flushed, second the render pipeline has to be emptied and last the 3d engine goes "idle" (the driver/gfx card). then the bitmap is transfered. in any 3d api (directx, opengl,glide), accessing directly to the frame/color buffer almost always gives performance impact.

(e.g. the glide sdk directly warns about locking the buffer, and accessing it).

i only access the buffer when i want to take a screenshot.


Edited by - Claus Hansen Ries on June 29, 2000 5:05:45 PM