Method of drawing loads of text

[ancient bolt]

I want to draw a lot of data on a map (think google maps or flightradar).
My goal now is to add text to my rendered data.
ID does not change often (but IDs can get added / removed) but alt should update in real time / every couple frames.

example label:

| ID: 1234 |

Alt: 5678m

but id like to draw this for possibly thousands of objects. what methods are suitable for this?

Right now ive tried just doing draw_string * 2 per object but it takes 200fps at 1k objects.

I asked Mr. GPT and he mentioned atlas textures (which ive never heard off) and combining everything into multimeshes. but that seems to mean instancing 7 quads per object in my example. is it viable?
(ID: )(id_number)
(Alt: )(5)(6)(7)(8)

[timid pendant]

Have you tried Label yet?

[ancient bolt]

might be overengineering this but i would assume labels draw individually and that would likely not have the performance im looking for.

also cluttering up the scene tree makes godot handle a bunch of extra stuff..

[timid pendant]

That's a very long way to say "no". 😅

[ancient bolt]

haha yeah, i was looking for a way to batch the drawing and so skipped the label method.

[marsh swallow]

Both GPT answers are nonsense afaik, those solve wildly different problems.

[nimble wigeon]

if it's only numbers you can make an "Atlas" with a texture 512x128 and the numbers from 0 to 9, then make quad meshes each UV mapped with a number and create the code to compose numbers out of that. You got draw calls for the different meshes but not for multiple textures.

i'm thinking you could also make a unique mesh with like 4 digits and move around the UVs, but not sure about the performance on mobile.

[marsh swallow]

I mean profile it I guess but I don't see why you'd get noticeable speed gains over just blitting the text especially given that with that approach you calculate positions per character instead of per text element

[vivid prawn]

if you're worried about the scene tree then just set each label to "process mode disabled", that way they won't receive any notifications

you could also dynamically instantiate and remove Labels that are in the fustrum so that only visible ones are in memory