Greetings again:
Let´s be fictional for a while…
Imagine yourself that somehow I managed to read the information of a 3ds file and I´ve stored in a “couple” of arrays.
Let´s pretend the file contains the animations for a character.
Should I compile the frames in a Display List? or use another method?
What if the file contains a level, map or anything really big (no animation) Should I put that on a Display List? (My GForce2 is staring at me in a funny way right now)
Thx a lot
?
as it’s pure fiction, why worry? sit down, relax, have a beer…
Jan
And if you feel frightened by your gf2 you can threaten to replace it with a gf-at-least-3, maybe this will calm it down again.
but to be seriously, display lists are a very fast way to manage static data, if you have in mind, that all data has to fit inside of graphics board memory, if it is too large and swapping occurs, it slows down seriously (slide show).
the “other method” are vertex buffer objects (vbo), but as display lists store nearly all OpenGL calls, vbo’s are more complicated if you want to change material or whatever is not only geomtery data, normals, tex coords and colors.
best is, you try, then YOU will be able to tell us what is best 
. and you will learn a lot, also.