[Flightgear-devel] RFD: 3D Text Issues

[David Megginson]

I'm struggling a bit with the best way to implement text for the new 
(3D-capable) animation code in FlightGear.  Plib's current approach seems 
suboptimal -- it uses textured fonts (good), but instead of adding the text 
directly to a scene graph, it requires a separate drawing pass for it (bad). 
 I wonder if the plib text is one of the reasons that the old (2D-only) 
animation code could hurt the framerate so badly.

So, what do we do?  Do we require each instrument to supply a texture with 
all the text it might use and then simply animate texture coordinates?  That 
works well for, say, "OIL" on an annunciator, but it isn't practical for 
frequencies, much less waypoint identifiers.

Or, on the other hand, do we recreate the entire functionality of the PLIB 
FNT library and integrate it properly into the scene graph, generating a 
separate quad for each character?

Are there any better solutions for general display-text support?  For 
mechanical displays with numbers on rotating drums, etc. (like the King KX 
170B NAVCOM), we should simply animate the mechanism -- we need text 
animations for LED and other more sophisticated display types.

All the best,

David

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