Autodesk is using Vulkan for some products (including using MoltenVK for the Mac version). As for using middleware, GPU's are vastly more capable and complicat

Autodesk is using Vulkan for some products (including using MoltenVK for the Mac version). As for using middleware, GPU's are vastly more capable and complicated today than 30y ago when OpenGL 1 appeared. In most cases it makes sense to use a higher level interface, specialized for the particular type of application you're writing, be it ANARI, a game engine, some scenegraph library, or whatever.