Help with Display Lists

[SuperSmashcz]

Hey Everyone, I'm new here ^^
I've been doing some C++ and opengl with SDL for a while now and I've heard of something called Display Lists.
I've tried finding tutorials on the subject online but I haven't had too much success.
Can anyone tell me what a Display List is and how they work? (For 3D if possible)
I've heard that they are supposed to be really fast when rendering large objects to a scene.
Can anyone help me out or point me in the right direction?

[MarauderIIC]

Hello, welcome to the forum!

I can't say it's something I've heard of. M_D_K can probably help.

[Spikey]

There's lots of info about display lists. Simple google search will do, Nehe has example too.
http://www.videotutorialsrock.com/openg ... s/home.php
http://glprogramming.com/red/chapter07.html
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/le ... ?lesson=12
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe= ... arch&meta=

Display lists are usually faster, because they are drawing instructions that are cached in the video memory. For example, without using display lists, you tell opengl to draw something. These instructions must be sent from the system ram to the video memory which than can be processed in the GPU, this process of passing instructions from system ram to video ram, is very slow. So we use display lists, store it on video memory and process with GPU right away, no wait time for passing between rams.. Sometimes you'll see rendering options in games like: Software mode and Hardware mode. This is pretty much the samething.

One catch is, after you generate a display list, you shouldn't be making any modifications to the instructions you included. If for any reason you need to modify vertices or texture coords, then you will need to use Vertex arrays.

I might've gotten some terminology wrong, but I think thats on the right track.

[SuperSmashcz]

Ah I got ya, and Thanks a lot (for greeting and explanation)