coordinate system conventions across graphics applications

Various graphics applications use different coordinate system conventions, such as handedness or y-up vs z-up.

Graphics APIs

Different graphics APIs have different convention for their definition of the normalized device coordinate.

• OpenGL
  • X, Y, Z ranges:
  • Y up
  • • (-1, -1) corresponds to the top-left corner
• Vulkan ¹
  • X, Y ranges: , Z range
  • Y down
  • (-1, -1) corresponds to the bottom-left corner
• DirectX
  • X, Y ranges: , Z range
  • Y up
  • (-1, -1) corresponds to the bottom-left corner

Footnotes

1. The new Vulkan Coordinate System - Matthew Wellings (note) ↩