Hello, I'm wondering how to implement HUD/menu sprites in an efficient manner. I'm using immediate mode for them right now (glBegin()...glEnd()) but I've read it's best to avoid that. Display lists seem ideal, but they leave me with a couple of questions: 1. the HUD/menu isn't completely static, meaning I'd have to have a seperate display list for almost every item. Will that create problems? 2. how can I integrate it nicely with my code? Do you write a "register" function, so the engine builds a display list for each item you add to your HUD/menu (grouping the static ones into 1 displaylist)? 3. should I simply stick to immediate mode? 4. how do you personally handle them in your projects? I'd be grateful for any advice on how to handle this best.

display lists give good performance but it is not too bad to use immediate mode to render a few polygons. but i recommend you to use a texture atlas for gui and render all gui elements with one draw state, one call. (imaged elements can be render seperately) if your vertex datas are not static you can use vertex arrays.

1. Multiple display lists generally arent a problem

2. Ive used the 'register' approach before but I found that it over complicated things but if you go for it then grouping the static items into 1 list seems an efficient way of doing it.

3 & 4 I use immediate mode these days for HUD / Menus - Its simple to write and maintain and dosent really hurt performance. If its not an in-game menu then theres no performance concerns anyway.

I suppose the best thing is to experiment but dont be afraid of a few glBegin/End - the performance hit is insignificant especially on modern hardware.

Thanks for your replies, rating++. Guess I'll be sticking to immediate mode for the time being.