SDL gives you an API for 2D rendering, mostly limited to drawing boxes, lines, and bitmaps. OpenGL lets you program the graphics card for any use case, most commonly 3D graphics with room to add complex effects and post-processing. The SDL API is just nowhere near flexible enough for what I want to achieve.
Plus, Vulkan is not really "faster" than OpenGL. It just gives you a different API for programming the same graphics hardware, which in the hands of the right person can be used for writing code which is "faster".
Plus, Vulkan is not really "faster" than OpenGL. It just gives you a different API for programming the same graphics hardware, which in the hands of the right person can be used for writing code which is "faster".