The disclosed technology teaches an AR calibration system for compensating for AR headset distortions. A calibration image is provided to an external screen and viewable through a headset reflector, and an inverse of the calibration image is provided to a headset display, reflected off the reflector and observed by a camera of the system while it is simultaneously observing the calibration image on the external screen. The camera is located to represent a user's point of view and aligned to observe the inverse calibration image projected onto the reflector. A distortion mapping transform is created using an algorithm to search through projection positions of the inverse calibration image until the inverse image observed by the camera cancels out an acceptable portion of the calibration image provided to the external screen as observed through the reflector by the camera, and the transform is used by the headset, to compensate for distortions.