hey Optus -- thanks for that tip.. i got the Z-fighting to work, i changed the near plane from 0.1 to 1000.0 and the far plane back down to 20000.0.

now my legend wont show up b/c the near plane has moved beyond where it is being drawn.. see the code above. i understand how to reset the near and far clip plane.. i wonder if i will have to reset the near and far clip plane back in the draw function so i wont get any z-fighting whenthe surfaces are drawn???

i am going to try that out and see how it works....

thanks all for your input..

see
http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/omniv/love_your_z_buffer.html
also check out www.opengl.org the developer far, it suggests how to do a spacesim frustum