[SoftwareMaven]

This is a really good point. OpenGL favored precision, which could slow things down significantly. D3D favored speed at the expense of pixel-level precision. I remember my ATI driver having a slider that I could turn up and down the D3D precision.

Also missing in the article was the incredibly strong marketing efforts Microsoft made towards game developers. I was in the industry at the time (first at a game company, then a 3D modeling package company, then a 3D modeling company) and you couldn't turn around without getting hit in the face with something about D3D.

My undergraduate degree in CS came from the place that developed the tea pot that sat on the cover of the original OpenGL developer books. I really wanted to see OpenGL win, but between Microsoft exerting its unstoppable mid-90's force in that space and SGI drying up, I think everything could have gone right with the ARB and D3D still would have won.