Virtual Optical Bench: A VR learning tool for optical design

Abstract

The design of optical lens assemblies is a difficult process that re-quires lots of expertise. The teaching of this process today is done on physical optical benches, which are often too expensive for students to purchase. One way of circumventing these costs is to use software to simulate the optical bench. This work presents a virtual optical bench, which leverages realtime ray tracing in combination with VR rendering to create a teaching tool which creates a repeatable, non-hazardous and feature-rich learning environment. The resulting application was evaluated in an expert review with 6 optical engineers.