> when the overwhelming majority of people involved with high-performance graphics are pretty sure that the abstractions have failed.
Poor abstractions. I'm not convinced that there can't be a well designed cross platform graphics API that is sufficient for the majority of cases. Prove that it's impossible or stop, because otherwise your claim that you don't advocate lock-in doesn't sound sincere.
Anything more useful to say than trolling comments? The commenter above claimed that cross platform graphics APIs aren't the way to go because they failed. I see no proof that it's not a possibility. They didn't even fail - they were quite useful in many cases but with their current downsides they didn't live up to real potential. So that can be improved by making better cross platform APIs instead of claiming that one has to run to hardware specific APIs right away and there are no other options.
I'm not trolling; I'm pointing out the fault(s) in your logic. Perhaps it is a "possibility", but it doesn't exist today, and better options are available, so why would I use an inferior implementation? Because it more closely coincides with my world view?
No, I need to get software written that runs well. Now, if my requirement is to run on N different platforms (where N > 1) then I will have to look at OpenGL. If it's not a requirement then I won't waste my time. You're comments reek of ideology and completely lack practicality. You make assumptions about a complex subject which smarter people than you or I have spent years working on and come to different conclusions.
Poor abstractions. I'm not convinced that there can't be a well designed cross platform graphics API that is sufficient for the majority of cases. Prove that it's impossible or stop, because otherwise your claim that you don't advocate lock-in doesn't sound sincere.