After clipping and division by w, depth coordinates range from -1 to 1, corresponding to the near and far clipping planes. depthRange specifies a linear mapping of the normalized depth coordinates in this range to window depth coordinates. Regardless of the actual depth buffer implementation, window coordinate depth values are treated as though they range from 0 through 1 (like color components). Thus, the values accepted by depthRange are both clamped to this range before they are accepted.

The initial setting of (0, 1) maps the near plane to 0 and the far plane to 1. With this mapping, the depth buffer range is fully utilized.

It is not necessary that the near value be less than the far value. Reverse mappings such as (1, 0) are acceptable.

Controls the affine transformation from normalized device coordinates to window coordinates. The viewport state variable consists of the coordinates (x, y) of the lower left corner of the viewport rectangle, (in pixels, initial value (0,0)), and the size (width, height) of the viewport. When a GL context is first attached to a window, width and height are set to the dimensions of that window.

Let (xnd, ynd) be normalized device coordinates. Then the window coordinates (xw, yw) are computed as follows:

xw = (xnd + 1) (width / 2) + x

yw = (ynd + 1) (heigth / 2) + y

Viewport width and height are silently clamped to a range that depends on the implementation, see maxViewportDims.