The depth channel represents the distance of objects from the camera.
Select View > Camera Attribute Editor... from the current view. See View > Camera Attribute Editor.
See the Overview of FCheck in the Rendering Utilities guide for information on FCheck.
FCheck does not let you view the z-depth data of an .IFF file. To view z-depth data, use a non .IFF file format and then view the z-depth data stored in the separate file.
If the output format is not IFF or RLA, Maya writes a separate depth file containing a black RGBA image with depth values.