hi! i''ve got a problem by using outlined fonts in ortho mode. i have to scale them by around 10 units to see the text and then it looks coarse. any ideas to get the fonts smoothed? thanks in advance

The scale factor needed is dependant on the size of the orthographic view. Which parameters do you pass to glOrtho / gluOrtho2D ?

The fact that fonts look coarse has nothing to do with orthographic mode. If it looks coarse in perspective mode, it will look coarse in orthographics mode too, and vice-versa.
There are generally two ways of reducing that ugly aspect :
1- set a higher font size (then you will porobably need to adjust the scale factor)
2- choose a different font, or set it simply keep the same font and set it to bold / italic.

HTH

1. I pass the window-coords to glOrtho
2. Iam stupid! I set the font height to default height value (0) <-- I think thats the problem.

I will test it tonight.
Thanks for your help!


Phantom

mmmh... the font height setting does not change anything not even the font height (why??). but the font in nehe''s outlined font tutorial looks exactly the same at a small fontsize (zooming the scene) so i think the problem isnt a problem.
are there alternatives to create small (good looking) fonts from the windows system fonts?


Phantom

Depends if you need speed. If you don''t, you could try the FreeType engine which does a great job of it, but it is very slow. I use it for my GUI, as speed doesn''t matter for that.

Use bitmap font builder

http://www.lmnopc.com/bitmapfontbuilder/

creates a texture from a truetype font, which you can use for lightning fast text rendering.

Thanks for your help!!

>> any ideas to get the fonts smoothed ?

choose another font.
Anyway, most of the glyphs (built by NeHe''s Win32 text tutorials) are very detailed IMO. I''d rather ask how to get them less detailed

I tried it with other fonts. It seems to me that the output quality setting takes no effect. I tried all possible quality settings with one effect: all fonts are drawn with the same quality. (I tried it also with nehe's lesson 14).

An other question is: what does the font size parameter really do? Definitely not sizing the font.
I am very confused.

Phantom

[edited by - _Phantom_ on September 19, 2003 1:50:38 AM]