How about some kind of scalability? If a system has a high-bandwidth
line and fast renderer, there is no reason to not allow thousands of
texture-mapped polygons. If the system has a 2400 baud link and CGA
graphics, they could get by with wireframe graphics with only the
most important objects shown. Other systems might want to just see
simple text. The key is that the standard should be designed so that
current systems work very well and future systems work even better.
Imagine if the standard was designed around 100kbps bandwidth and Pentium
systems with local-bus video... What happens when everyone gets 100Mbps
on systems that run at 1000MIPS and 100,000 texture-mapped polys per
second?
Greg