glBitmap() without GL_COLOR_INDEX

Question

Is it somehow possible to get glBitmap() to draw a GL_RGBA bitmap? glBitmap() is a lot quicker than glDrawPixels(), but perhaps that has to do with that the format is GL_COLOR_INDEX instead of GL_RGBA?

I'm running my glDrawPixels() in a display list; is there perhaps some smart way to speed it up?

Answer 1

From the documentation: "A bitmap is a binary image" - Here a "binary image" simply means an image in which every pixel has exactly two possible colors which map to "transparent" and "the current raster color". You can't paint anything else using this function.

Some other things you can try to achieve the same effect, possibly with better performance:

• Drawing a screen-aligned quad with a texture
• Drawing a textured point sprite using texture coordinate replacement