Same exact experience when I got my first Voodoo3, I spent weeks trying to figure out D3D from DirectX/MSDN's docs (was it even MSDN at the time?), and I don't

Same exact experience when I got my first Voodoo3, I spent weeks trying to figure out D3D from DirectX/MSDN's docs (was it even MSDN at the time?), and I don't think I ever got it to render a single triangle. I was pretty defeated for a while, took me months to get motivated to try it again using OpenGL 1.1, and it just worked. I don't know how faulty my recollection is but I think I remember it was also much easier to search the web for tutorials/discussions about OpenGL than D3D at the time.