Measurement of Focal Length for Off-axis Optical Systems

An off-axis system refers to an optical system in which the optical axis and normal vector at the vertex of each surface do not match. The most important specification in an optical system is its focal length. Among the various methods for measuring the focal length, the most suitable method for the off-axis system is the method that adopts magnification. However, head-mounted display (HMD) optics must be measured while considering the virtual image distance, which is not infinity owing to product characteristics. For the virtual image distance, a camera with a focusing function was used. By measuring HMD optics via this magnification method, the error generated in this measurement was 0.68% of the HMD's focal length, which is within the 1%-3% range of the conventionally permitted design error for the focal length allowed at the optical design stage. Therefore, it can be verified that the measurement accuracy of the method proposed in this study is sufficiently feasible in practice.