how does glDepthRange work?

Question

My vertex cords are :

GLfloat vertices[]=
    {
        0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,                                   
        -0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,
        -0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f,
        0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f,//face 1

        0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,
        0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,//face 2

        0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,
        0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f,
        0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,//face 3                

        -0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,
        -0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f,//face 4

        0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,
        0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,0.5f,-0.5f,
        -0.5f,0.5f,0.5f,//face 5

        -0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f,
        -0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        0.5f,-0.5f,-0.5f,
        0.5f,-0.5f,0.5f//face 6     

    };

now, i am changing z cords by:

for(int i=0;i<24;i++)
    vertices[i*3+2]*=10
glDepthRange(0,10.0);

Now, i am expecting that z cords will be mapped to -0.5 to 0.5 range due to glDepthRange call and i can see a proper cube, but it gives o/p as that of when i comment glDepthRange call above with distorted geometry.

Answer 1

Let me cite you the man pages:

After clipping and division by w, depth coordinates range from -1 to 1, corresponding to the near and far clipping planes. glDepthRange 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 glDepthRange are both clamped to this range before they are accepted.

highlights mine

In other words, you can't really use depth values greater than 1; you have to calculate them properly by yourself, instead. It essentially concludes to setting appropriate near and far values in your Projection Matrix and translating Z coordinate in your Modelview Matrix, so that all final Zs are between the aforementioned.

Please leave a comment if you need more detailed explanation.