DirectX 5 programs (Counter Strike for example) will run under DirectX 9
CounterStrike uses the Half-life engine, which is based on the Quake 2 Engine, and thus probably uses OpenGL or the Quake2 software renderer (it works on the FireGL card, which seems to suggest that it is not using DirectX, since there are no DirectX drivers for said card). Try playing "Incubation" or "Panzer General 3D" both DirectX 5 games, neither work (Incubation just "crashes to desktop" before it's even started, PG3 says something about not being able to create a surface of depth -1 or something equally rediculous, and then exits).I agree DirectX 7 is a good balance (for now at least, since DirectX 7 is still distributed as part of DX).
As for massive failure rates with OpenGL, people keep saying it, but I haven't seen any evidence that supports it actually happening, and thus can only comment based on my own personal experience with both OpenGL and DirectX, although I acknowledge that I am probably more technically inclinded and more persistent at trying new and interesting games than most "average" users.
When James' Rockout demo was released to the public there where what? 10 reported incidents where out-of-date drivers was the main point of failure for low performance (the other was the rotating background killing the fillrate)?
Sure it's an issue, but hardly a massive failure rate by anyones measuring stick, and nowhere near the 50% that everyone keeps attributing to "someone I know". At most it's a marginal inconvenience.
However given BlitzMAXes open and modular approach to putting power in the hands of developers it would be a trivial matter (compared to for example writting a general purpose OpenGL wrapper for DirectX) for the so inclined to provide a third party DirectX renderer, if it was indeed a viable business option, it could infact be the start of an enterprising young individuals career.
Ofcourse I know that Mark is the über coder, and no-one but him writes flawless code, so no-one is going to actually buy said 3rd party module because "waiting for an official BRL module" somehow seems like the more sensible choice.
Anyway BRL will eventually run out of stuff to do some time after Maplet2 (as far as I can tell), and by then, if the demand (and thus expected sales) is great enough to justify the cost of development, I'm sure BRL will do that next. After all BRL is a business, and there's no place for religion when you're making money. Unless you're one of those TV preachers ofcourse, but I digress...