Doing graphics via the framebuffer is really slow on modern hardware. Even if you want true pixel-perfect graphics (something that modern 3D-rendering API's ar

Doing graphics via the framebuffer is really slow on modern hardware. Even if you want true pixel-perfect graphics (something that modern 3D-rendering API's aren't easy to use for, hence where simply relying on the framebuffer is the most obvious approach) it's just far better to use GPU compute. Actually even simple GPU compositing (which can be feasibly made pixel-perfect, as shown by its routine use w/ modern desktop environments) gives you an unlimited amount of arbitrarily-large "sprites" - way better than what you get with pure CPU rendering on a framebuffer, and something which can be quite useful in a real program.