# Text Rendering Alternatives?

**URL:** <https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/text-rendering-alternatives/15522>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [November 9, 2020, 7:00am UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/text-rendering-alternatives/15522 "2020-11-09T07:00:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pat\_lvl17](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@pat\_lvl17](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/pat_lvl17)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2020, 7:00am UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/text-rendering-alternatives/15522/1 "2020-11-09T07:00:54Z")

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Hi, started using BabylonJS a few months ago and love it so far. Will be sharing my project here once it’s a little further along.

I’m looking for ways to render text. I’m currently using the standard “GUI” approach, which is fine, but really crushes performance if updated often. I have lots of game stats that need to update every frame, and doing so with GUI text brings the absolute framerate down from ~1500 to ~30, so not ideal.

I don’t need anything fancy, just a transparent rectangle with text on it that I can move around in 3D space. In the past, I’ve used tools that render a font into a texture, then used a custom shader to set the right UV coordinates to get the character I want. Anything like that available for BablyonJS or do we have to do it manually?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Evgeni\_Popov](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/evgeni_popov/32/4432_2.png) [@Evgeni\_Popov](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/Evgeni_Popov)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2020, 10:03am UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/text-rendering-alternatives/15522/2 "2020-11-09T10:03:36Z")

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Welcome aboard!

Using a font texture and a custom shader is probably the fastest if you don’t need what all the GUI provides.

Maybe this link can help: [Draw high number of texts fast?](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/draw-high-number-of-texts-fast/14457)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pat\_lvl17](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@pat\_lvl17](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/pat_lvl17)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2020, 4:49pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/text-rendering-alternatives/15522/3 "2020-11-09T16:49:30Z")

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Thanks, I did look through that thread and didn’t see any great solutions, unless maybe I missed something.

I also found this thread: [3D text in Babylon - Announcements - Babylon.js](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/3d-text-in-babylon/253)

That would be a nice solution but there doesn’t appear to be any way to change the text once it’s created. And doing a “new Writer” on every frame seems like a very bad idea.