Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
Well you could write a middle-layer for graphics that kept you from messing with breakable API code.
Well, that's what ANGLE is trying to achieve (http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/ and http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/int...e-project.html), but they're not quite there just yet, and they still have to exclude a variety of graphics cards and hardware drivers for stability reasons.

I don't remember if FireFox also uses ANGLE, but I've read that both Chrome & FireFox perform extra checks on the shaders to try and detect errors the HLSL compiler and drivers don't handle very well (like http://www.gamedev.net/topic/579554-...-crash-in-dx9/).

But anyway, I'm hoping the push for stable 3D graphics in web apps will ensure that stability will happen, from the hardware vendors down, ANGLE & other middle-layers will (and already) have trouble keeping up with all the new hardware and driver revisions.

Would you please share the shader code that managed to crash your PC? What operating system and API did you use?
It was definitely nVidia, and crashing with either Cg & HLSL, I don't have the code available anymore, but it might have been a similar issue to the DX9 one I linked above, ie. an error in the shader code that wasn't reported correctly.