is there a nother way to do lighting sence openGL is only limited to 7 lights per scene i need nother way to handle light.a way that suppots all the same lighting types of OpenGL(emmisive spotlight ect).or is there a way to have more then 7 light ???

It''s actually 8 lights ( 0-7 ). Remember that those 8 lights are per-primitive, not per scene. If you use vertex programs, you can have as many lights as you want, plus there''s always per-pixel lighting methods, which is unlimited in the number of lights you are able to use ( well, practically you have limits ).

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.

no more than 8 lights, (from GL_LIGHT0 to GL_LIGHT7) but 8 lights is more than enough. I''m pretty sure you don''t need more than 8 lights *simultaneously*. It has already been discussed billions of time, please search the forum.

ah, python_regious you were faster than me

at opengl.org faq there a brief answer to your question

Tee hee

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.

a related question - should I really try and use the built-in lights or is implementing all of the lights in the scene via lightmapping a hugely inoptimal way?

Crispy

lightmaps should be used wisely since (1) usually they''re not dynamic and (2) they eat a texture unit. Moreover it''s a bit hard to implement lightmaps whereas OpenGL standard lighting is easy (you don''t even have to call glNormal thanks to the GL_AUTO_NORMAL option).