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# docs.GL

GLSL 4
GLSL ES 3

# gl_FrontFacing

## Name

gl_FrontFacing — indicates whether a primitive is front or back facing

## Declaration

`in bool gl_FrontFacing ;`

## Description

Available only in the fragment language, `gl_FrontFacing` is an input variable whose value is `true` if the fragment belongs to a front-facing primitive and false otherwise. The determination of whether a triangle primitive is front-facing is made by examining the sign of the area of the triangle, including a possible reversal of this sign as controlled by `glFrontFace`. One way to compute this area is:

a=1 2 ∑ j=0 n-1 x w i y w i+1 - x w i+1 y w i

where x w i and y w i are the x and y window coordinates of the ith vertex of the n-vertex polygon.

The sign of this computation is negated when the value of `GL_CLIP_ORIGIN` (the clip volume origin, set with glClipControl) is `GL_UPPER_LEFT`.

## Version Support

| OpenGL Shading Language Version
--- | ---
Variable Name | 1.10 | 1.20 | 1.30 | 1.40 | 1.50 | 3.30 | 4.00 | 4.10 | 4.20 | 4.30 | 4.40 | 4.50
gl_FrontFacing | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔

## See Also

gl_FragCoord, glClipControl

## Copyright

Copyright © 2011-2014 Khronos Group. This material may be distributed subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v 1.0, 8 June 1999. https://opencontent.org/openpub/.

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