If one wishes to be successful in the game industry one has to present some nice eye candy.. that's how it is these days, a good game cannot sell without also being good looking. But also we wish to support as many graphics cards and OS'es as possible. This brings us to a dilemma - what if I can do a really cool effect, for example water, but it only runs on the newest DX9 based cards like the Radeon 9700 / 9500 series or the Geforce FX... do we use that effect in the engine and then drop support for older cards like for example a GF2? Or do we use a more simple water effect to maintain compatibility with the older cards?