Optical assessment of head-mounted displays in visual space

The optics of head-mounted displays (HMDs) is designed from the pupil of the eye to the miniature display, and the optics is thus commonly solely assessed in the plane of the miniature display. Such assessment does not provide information that usefully interfaces with task-based performance metrics. We present a comprehensive framework for the assessment of the optics of HMDs in visual space, which applies to nonrotationally symmetric systems as well. Four key measures of visual performance are presented, and macro files were implemented to validate the framework. We illustrate the methods using an Erfle eyepiece. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.