With the first commercial version of the Oculus Rift (Rift CV1) now trickling out of warehouses, and Rift DK2, HTC Vive DK1, and Vive Pre already being in developers’ hands, it’s time for a more detailed comparison between these head-mounted displays (HMDs). In this article, I will look at these HMDs’ lenses and optics in the most objective way I can, using a calibrated fish-eye camera (see Figures 1, 2, and 3).
Figure 1: Picture from a fisheye camera, showing a checkerboard calibration target displayed on a 30″ LCD monitor.
Figure 2: Same picture as Figure 1, after rectification. The purple lines were drawn into the picture by hand to show the picture’s linearity after rectification.
Figure 3: Rectified picture from Figure 2, re-projected into stereographic projection to simplify measuring angles. Concentric purple circles indicate 5-degree increments away from the projection center point.
