# vulkan perspective matrix vs opengl perspective matrix

Hi I have a slight confusion in using the opengl perspective matrix in vulkan. glm's perspective matrix works directly in vulkan just by multiplying the "[1,1 term by -1 but when I compared the formula for creation of perspective matrix for both the apis.

opengl one here:http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_projectionmatrix.html

vulkan here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0_ONQQ5ZNM( at 12:10)

and I see 2 differences: 1st at 1,1 2nd at 2,3: here is my doubt(opengl's is 2 times the one in vulkan.

So how does glm's matrix works for my vulkan program just by correcting [1,1 location? Please do correct me if I am making some mistake in understanding the differences in matrix.

• Could you excerpt the specific formulas you're talking about and put them in your question? There are multiple formulas in the page you linked and the youtube video, and I don't know which ones you mean exactly. That said, the difference in [2][3] sounds related to depth range. Vulkan uses a 0 to 1 final depth range and OpenGL is −1 to 1. Jan 11 at 4:46

Note that there is a little extra info here to (hopefully) provide the info need to understand the answer at the end. Plus I don't know of any sources that give all the solution in one place....

Vulkan clip space has [1, -1] for the y axis where OpenGL has [-1, 1] so just multiplying the perspective matrix [1][1] value by -1 will "correct" the OpenGL matrix to work with Vulkan. All it really does is flip the y axis. (or you can also use gl_Postion.y *= -1)

As of Vulkan 1.1 negative values are allowed when setting up the viewport which gives a fairly natural solution to the same problem.

For the depth range: Vulkan has a [0, 1] range for the Z axis in NDC space where OpenGL has [-1, 1] range (by default). There are a couple ways to handle this. You can remap the OpenGL range to the Vulkan range fairly easily with:

gl_Position.z = (gl_Position.z + gl_Position.w) / 2.0;


The other option is to modify the perspective matrix to match up with Vulkan. The Vulkan approach (which is also used in directx) maps to floating point numbers better since floating point numbers have more accuracy near zero. Also, some depth conversion code is simplified using a range of [0,1]. Finally, using a range [0,1] allows for "reverse Z" (improving floating point number distribution)

Here is some code for generating a Vulkan friendly perspective matrix. Note that this code looks a lot simpler then what GLM uses because it expects a symmetric frustum. This is code is copied from the FGED website...mostly

mat4 MakeProjectionMatrix(float fovy_rads, float s, float near, float far)
{
float g = 1.0f / tan(fovy_rads * 0.5);
float k = far / (far - near);

return mat4(g / s,  0.0f,   0.0f,   0.0f,
0.0f,  g,      0.0f,   0.0f,
0.0f,  0.0f,   k,      -near * k,
0.0f,  0.0f,   1.0f,   0.0f);
}


(This solution does not flip the y-axis.)

Finally: A perspective matrix setup for OpenGL will work in Vulkan but it has limitations. The y axis will be flipped and objects falling in the [0,1] range will be visible. But objects falling in the [-1,0) range will not. Since Vulkan has a depth range of [0,1] it is easy to get the "illusion" that it is fully functional since the camera will appear to map correctly to the full depth range.