Camera Data "View Vector" Interpretation I am trying to develop some materials with interesting optical properties. In doing so, I am investigating the use of the "View Vector", however I do not understand it. Looking at the documentation, it says it is a (unit) vector pointing from the camera to the point on the object. 

However, the following screenshot suggests something different. I would expect taking the dot product of the "View Vector" with the object normals should yield a value of 1 when the object surface faces the camera, and a value less than 1 elsewhere, specifically zero for parts of the object perpendicular to the camera viewpoint.

The 3 objects in the screenshot show a) behaviour different to that expected and b) seemingly inconsistent behaviour. What is going on here?

Thanks
The View Vector is in Camera space, but the Normal is in World space. 

You need to transform one of the vectors to the other space if you need to compare them. I learned this now so I mark this question as helpful.



But this can apparently be simplified using the Incoming socket on the Geometry node. Incoming points towards the camera instead of from Camera towards geometry so the Absolute math node becomes redundant.