Announced last month at CES 2015, the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) project encompasses a $199 ‘hacker development kit’ (HDK) VR headset, and an SDK designed to interoperate with a range of headsets, peripherals, and game engines. Both facets of the project are open source, with their components freely available to be modified and redistributed. Sensics, who spearheaded OSVR with Razer, played a major role in the development of the HDK headset. Sensics CEO Yuval Boger joins us to explain the unit’s dual-element optics, one of the things that sets it apart from most other consumer VR headsets now approaching the market.

This guest article is written by Yuval Boger, CEO of Sensics, specializing in professional-grade head mounted displays. Sensics is also the founding contributor of OSVR, the open-source virtual reality initiative. Boger blogs about VR on his personal blog, VRguy.net.

When the OSVR HDK was unveiled last month, one aspect that received a lot of positive reviews was the quality of the optics – clear to the edges, no pre-distortion required. Since the Open-Source Virtual Reality project is indeed open-source, and its Hacker Development Kit will have the full production file available to download in a couple of weeks, I can talk openly about how Sensics designed it for those that are interested.

What’s all the fuss about? Take a look at this comparison photo:

I took these photos a few months ago when we received the first batch of HDK optics. I found a test pattern on the Internet and displayed it on a 5.5″ display, much like the one inside the HDK. I then used an iPhone 4 camera to take both photos. The left photo shows the test image through the HDK dual-element optics. The right photo shows the same test image through a popular single-element eyepiece. I was trying to get the best image in both cases. Is this a scientifically precise comparison? Probably not, but it’s quite telling as is.

As you can see, the test pattern is in nice focus at the center of both the left and right photos. However, as you look towards the edges of the photo, the image remains in focus on the dual-element photo but is blurry in the single-element photo. Compare the ‘Gmail’ header on the left, quite readable, with the same header on the right—quite blurry.

You can also see that colors also break up on the right image. You start seeing the separation between red, green and blue. The colors stay intact on the left image. Last, if you look at the three bands of test pattern (right half of left image), you can see that they remain pretty much straight, whereas the same bands on the right image appear curvy.

In short, we are seeing a blurry image, chromatic aberration and geometrical distortion in the single-element design and not so much on the dual-element one.

Is the dual-element design in the HDK perfect? The best Sensics has ever done? The design to beat all designs from here on? Of course not! It’s just a good design and solid engineering. Let’s look at what makes it better in some aspects than the single-element design.

When we start an optical design project, we look at the requirements. How much field of view are we looking for? What is the screen size we are trying to image? What are the materials we are allowed to use (e.g. plastic? glass?) How much is it allowed to weigh? What are our cost constraints? How much eye relief (distance from cornea to first optical element) do we want? What is the desired eye box (how much the eye can move from the optimal location without significantly losing image quality)? Are we allowing aspheric optics? How wide or deep do we allow the optics to be? And so on…

All of these are constraints and every design has them. But the constraints are different from design to design, much like some cars are built for gas mileage and others are built for super-quick acceleration. That’s why there is no single design that is good for every optical problem.

Usually, optics for HMDs have lots of constraints. You typically don’t want to make them from glass because glass is heavier than plastic. You have limits on the lens diameter and size because you want to use them in a binocular setting. You don’t want them to cost too much because you are aiming at some price target. When you give these constraints to the designer—after he or she finishes pulling their hair out—the design starts.

An optical lens has two sides. The exact curvature of each side can be different. If you have two lenses, you have four surfaces to work with. If you have 5 lenses, you have 10 surfaces to work with. More surfaces mean more degrees of freedom and more degrees of freedom mean that you can meet more of the constraints. So, having more optical elements usually means you can produce a better image. In our case better meant less distortion, more focus, less color aberration.

It’s almost like curve fitting: trying to fit a polynomial (e.g. y= a + b*x + c*x^2 + d*x^3 + …) to set of (x,y) points. The more parameters you are allowed to use, the better your fit will be. If your curve is only “y = a”, you’d often be in trouble. If you can use “y= a + b*x”, you’ll have a better fit and if you can use “y= a + b*x + c*x^2” you’ll do even better.

So, we decided that a single-element design did not give us a good-enough answer to our constraints and decided to add a second element and give our designers additional degrees of freedom.

Here is what the design looks like:

The screen is on the right side. The eye pupil is on the left side. The two lenses are in between: a 32-mm diameter lens closer to the eye and a 43mm diameter lens close to the screen. Note the interesting left-side surface of the bigger lens. It is made this way to optimize the image quality.

Here is what this looks in 3D:

Both lenses are made from optical-grade plastic. The smaller lens is from a material called Zeonex F52R and the larger one is from Polystyrene . There are hundreds of types of optical-grade glass but just a handful of plastics, but plastics are lighter and sometimes cheaper to use. One more constraint to worry about.

Why doesn’t everyone use dual-element design? Because others might be focused on different constraints. For instance, dual elements roughly cost twice as much to make as a single element. Dual elements are heavier than a single element. Dual element eyepieces do a better job of controlling color and geometric distortion, but one could correct for color and geometric distortion with the GPU (though I don’t know how one can correct for blurriness with the GPU). So, when we designed the OSVR HDK we were focused on some constraints and that’s why we chose two elements.

Why not three or four or even five elements? Same story. We don’t want it to cost too much. We don’t want the optical path to be longer. We want to keep the weight down. Is someone going to soon write a blog post on their 7-element design? Maybe so. I can’t wait to read it!

Full Disclosure: At the time of publishing, Razer has OSVR ads placed on Road to VR. Yuval Boger is CEO of Sensics, a founding member of OSVR.