openGL and JOGL

Hierarchical Display Lists

You can create a hierarchical display list, which is a display list that executes another display list by calling glCallList() between a glNewList() and glEndList() pair. A hierarchical display list is useful for an object made of components, especially if some of those components are used more than once. For example, this is a display list that renders a bicycle by calling other display lists to render parts of the bicycle:

glNewList(listIndex,GL_COMPILE);
   glCallList(handlebars);
   glCallList(frame);
   glTranslatef(1.0,0.0,0.0);
   glCallList(wheel);
   glTranslatef(3.0,0.0,0.0);
   glCallList(wheel);
glEndList();

To avoid infinite recursion, there's a limit on the nesting level of display lists; the limit is at least 64, but it might be higher, depending on the implementation. To determine the nesting limit for your implementation of OpenGL, call

  glGetIntegerv(GL_MAX_LIST_NESTING, GLint *data);

OpenGL allows you to create a display list that calls another list that hasn't been created yet. Nothing happens when the first list calls the second, undefined one.