Alvin: Your link is a wonderful page but it is not your 'high glass' study, it is a bunch of hicksons. Nice page but not on point. I know you have a great study on the issue but it may be some other link on your awesome website I think.

Lou: The reason Alvin started the reply with LOL on the other thread you linked to here is that Alvin is from what I have seen the #1 proponent of the virtues of eyepieces with as few lenses as possible. His comment on 'high-glass eyepiece' only refers to the Naglers and Ethos in that those designs have quite a few elements and not so much because they have a wide field of view.

The argument is the more glass surfaces, the more loss of signal from light hitting discontinuities and leading to reflection and interference loss and it all adds up.

The Zao-II are 'best of the best' and extremely rare and as such extremely expensive on a cost per gram of 'glass' ;-)
Others that have come up include SuperMonocentric eyepieces that are a very basic and extremely low lens count eyepiece.

It is for the reason that Alvin has studied this so much that I seek his expertise and opinion on this issue from time to time.