   Vertex Lists
  At the moment I''ve got a big ''for loop'' that cycles through my heightmap data, this is ''inside'' a glNewList(), glEndList() bracket, and I got an increase of about 0.2fps by doing this. I was just wondering how I go about making a vertex list, and saving this list so as my glCallList function doesn''t have to go through the ''for loop'' every frame, and whether or not this should provide a significant speed up?  
  I''m not sure exactly how the display lists work but your "for loop" is not actualy run everytime. As far as i know, when you are generating a display list opengl listens to a a certain set of opengl functions such as glVertex and records the result so that when you call the list again it already knows the final outcome and can do some optimizations to go faster. I think to put a vertex array into a display list is only going to record your setpointer functions and draw primitive functions. I would just search on how to do normal vertex arrays at first and you should see a huge jump in performance. Then you could figure out which lines you call every frame and put those into a display list. 