I can assure you that we are very much aware of the issues of modern graphics hardware. I agree that by the end of the year vertex- and pixel-shader hardware must be the bare minimum. Even more, the advanced programmability of newer hardware like ATI's 9700 series or the 3DLabs P-10 must be taken into account - the only real handle for that is a high-level shading language.
The NOVA design views any fixed-function pipeline as a special case where the shader programs are pre-defined.
OpenGL compatibility is the single most important stepping stone in cross-platform development. This includes both the current OpenGL 1.4 with the appropriate extensions, as well as OpenGL 2.0. I think that we are on the right track for that.
