More Performance Hints
If you are drawing big polygons (and are therefore fill rate limited):
Backface culling
glCullFace(GL_BACK); glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);
Read newsgroup - several interesting posts by TAs and others. Here are a few of the most generally relevant:
Using GLUT with C++
Smooth animation with GLUT
GLUT 3.7 key-up callback
GLUT full-screen mode
OpenGL high-performance tips and tricks