glCallList looks interesting, but is it for static objects only? For example, what if I want to make a landscape editor or deform part of the mesh.. do I have to load it into my own matrix to modify the values and regen the callList? Or if I want to animate texture on the mesh stored in the callist? I fseek, therefore I fam.

Correct, display lists are much better for static geometry. Once you create a display list, the only way to edit the geometry (that I know of at least) is to recreate the list. That''s probably not something you want to be doing frequently.

I render some cheesy water by making a display list of a 2d sine wave, then scaling it by a value moving between -1 and 1. That makes the crests becomes troughs (and troughs become crests) when the scale is -1. Anyway, it''s a decent effect that''s really easy to do.

You can even animate the texture by changing the texture matrix. In my water, in order to make the water look more fluid, I just translate the texture around in a circle. It works pretty well. The point is, display lists don''t have to be totally static.

thanks for your input I''ll have to remember those pointers, if I survive that far into this.

I fseek, therefore I fam.