cycloneIII any tutorial how to drive lcd

I guess, all Altera examples for interfacing LCD are based an NIOS embedded processor. I suggest to take the time to study some general literature and tutorials to understand, what's the purspose of NIOS and why basically all ethernet, display, audio or RS232 examples are using it.

However, you have to decide, if it's also meaningful for your intended FPGA application. It's possible as well, to control the LCD in pure HDL code. To my opinion, Altera should have also HDL examples. Otherwise, you're giving the impression, that complex actions necessarily need a processor (which isn't the case, actually). And the user may ask, if he should rather use a fast standard µP than an Altera FPGA...