OpenTK/C# - 2D text rendering works, how about 3D?
<p>Edit: Bad angle picture was due to Depth Testing. Still need the 'right' way to do 3d text rendering though!</p>

<p>I got 2D text rendering in OpenTK working. It's very simple, I use .NET Graphics class methods to draw a string to Bitmap, which I can load into GPU via OpenTK. Ok great, but how about 3D?</p>

<p>I'm thinking about this in terms of a cylinder. What is a cylinder? It's just a circle stretched out over a certain height. That's EXACTLY what I want to do here! I researched a bunch...but surprisingly there isn't all that much info readily available IMO for such a basic task.</p>

<p>Here's what I've tried:</p>

<p>1) Rendering the bitmap 100 times from Z = 0.0f to 1.0f. This actually works pretty well! For certain rotations anyway. 
2) Drawing 16x16x16 Voxels (well, I think I'm drawing voxels). Basically the idea is, use the typical GL.TexCoord3 and GL.Vertex3 methods for drawing the SURFACE of a cube, but because we are drawing so freakin many of them, I figured it would actually give depth to my text. It sort of does, but the results are actually worse than attempt 1. </p>

<p>I want to get this working with a really simple solution, if one exists. I'm using Immediate mode, and if possible I'd like to keep using that.</p>

<p>This is what solution 1 looks like at a good angle:<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/kJcih.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/kJcih.png" alt="good angle"></a> 
Bad Angle: <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yl3KW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yl3KW.png" alt="bad angle"></a></p>

<p>I know that my method is inherently flawed because these bitmaps dont actually have a depth when I draw them, which is why at some critical angles either the text becomes flat looking, or disappears from view.</p>