Late in the game, but OpenGL was not a failure. It was written for fixed GPU hardware pipelines, for which OpenGL was perfectly suitable. And one with which one could write application code for without middleware. And it was a lot nicer API than the contemporary Direct3D, which was forced down people's throats with the usual Microsoft monopoly tactics.
It started to break down with programmable shader pipelines. And got a bit weird, with most of the API being irrelevant for the programmable-pipeline hardware.
As for Vulkan, it's a very different type of API. It's a kind of hardware abstraction layer that's easier to write drivers for. You should not use Vulkan if you're not writing hardware drivers or middleware. It's an extremely verbose and cumbersome API to use for anything.
For a low level API it's probably OK to write other APIs on, although the extreme on-your-face verbosity seems a bit unnecessary. AFAIK widely used higher level APIs have failed to really materialize. Maybe WebGPU, which is still quite low level. Game engines did get Vulkan backends quite quickly, but I wouldn't call game engines APIs as they are nowadays.
So probably you should use a game engine, even if you don't need 95% of their features. Or don't want to use languages and architectures they are married with.
It started to break down with programmable shader pipelines. And got a bit weird, with most of the API being irrelevant for the programmable-pipeline hardware.
As for Vulkan, it's a very different type of API. It's a kind of hardware abstraction layer that's easier to write drivers for. You should not use Vulkan if you're not writing hardware drivers or middleware. It's an extremely verbose and cumbersome API to use for anything.
For a low level API it's probably OK to write other APIs on, although the extreme on-your-face verbosity seems a bit unnecessary. AFAIK widely used higher level APIs have failed to really materialize. Maybe WebGPU, which is still quite low level. Game engines did get Vulkan backends quite quickly, but I wouldn't call game engines APIs as they are nowadays.
So probably you should use a game engine, even if you don't need 95% of their features. Or don't want to use languages and architectures they are married with.