The Design and Development of the Destiny-Class CyberCANOE Hybrid Reality Environment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I only wish to congratulate the authors for their work. This architecture seems to have great potential.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper and your comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article does not present a specific research. There is no research methodology. There is no research. This paper introduce in detailing the design and construction of an OLED-based Hybrid Reality environment with visual acuity approaching 20/20.
- A background of the work is not provided in the introduction. You can comment on the CAVE developed by C. Cruz Neira, and other VR navigation systems (e.g. powerwall. https://viscon.de/en/vr-2/vr-powerwall/).
- Lines 36-37, reference [1] is duplicate. Only the second is necessary.
- Line 416, reference should be numbered [X] (Woods, 2010)
From my point of view, (as described in the article), the use of Hololens during assembly is not significant in this work. It is not of scientific interest.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper and for your comments.
The duplicate reference and missing numbered reference have been corrected in the new paper revision.
We find the Hololens relevant to the paper because we encourage other manufacturers to use various VR/AR technologies to aid in their design process and it is ironic that our field does not take advantage of own technologies in design and implementation. The Hololens portion shows how we utilized available AR technology to aid in construction of our hybrid reality system.
This paper may have read like a capstone project and it was written specifically with that very practical intent in mind- to highlight the fact that a lot of non-obvious, non-trivial knowledge is lost in the details that go into the construction of such a system, and as a result future generations of researchers will lose this knowledge. In a way it is like what Elon Musk experienced when establishing SpaceX. He discovered that many of the scientists who worked on the space program had passed away and gone with them their knowledge of how to build spaceships. And so, some re-invention of the wheel had to occur. It was our intent for the detail of our paper to provide useful practical knowledge beyond scientific circles to engineers in companies who develop VR products that enable our field to flourish by making the technology more affordable. We will rework the abstract and/or introduction to more clearly reflect this
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper presents a novel mixed reality device based on the 3d caves technology. The work is well written and presented. The minor advantages in the new device such as higher resolution and reduced cost, due to the use of cheaper higher resolution monitors do not pose as a significant novelty. However, the process was well presented and included a number of novelties such as the use of Microsoft hololens. So I think the main novelty is the process of the construction, rather than the actual device. That you should reflected in the abstract and introduction of the paper as well. It should look more like a paper and less like a capstone project report. The related work section must be enlarged and include more relevant papers. Journal papers must include at least 30 references from good sources (good journals and conference papers). Then the authors must compare their results with similar work in order to justify their novelty. This was done at a very limited scale. The significance of this new cave system was not clear. What the impact to the end users? This paper has great potentials but it needs some major revision and new experiments. I would advise the authors to do the extra mile and add some additional equipment such as olfactory displays to their cave system. The user tracking system can be improved. There are many alternatives that the authors should consider. These changes will increase the number of references, justify the novelty and increase the overall scientific value of the paper.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our paper and for your comments.
The use of organic LEDs produces a VR system with not only greater resolution at lower cost but with color gamut and contrast ratios far exceeding previous systems including even the current generation of head mounted displays. The information about using cheaper consumer grade displays is important to state because past systems like the CAVE2 used commercial grade displays which cost significantly more. Our paper shows that purchasing commercial grade equipment is no longer required for such a system and consumer grade is sufficient. We will rework the abstract and/or introduction to more clearly reflect this.
This paper may have read like a capstone project and it was written specifically with that very practical intent in mind- to highlight the fact that a lot of non-obvious, non-trivial knowledge is lost in the details that go into the construction of such a system, and as a result future generations of researchers will lose this knowledge. In a way it is like what Elon Musk experienced when establishing SpaceX. He discovered that many of the scientists who worked on the space program had passed away and gone with them their knowledge of how to build spaceships. And so, some re-invention of the wheel had to occur. It was our intent for the detail of our paper to provide useful practical knowledge beyond scientific circles to engineers in companies who develop VR products that enable our field to flourish by making the technology more affordable. We compared our system to a few related CAVE systems in Table 3. The Destiny System Comparison.
With regards to impact to end-users, this paper is already very long, and we wanted to focus it only on the minute details of how the system is put together. A paper on end user experiences could come later.
There are indeed other possible tracking systems to use or olfactory displays can be added as well as fans for wind and so on. But that is not the point of the display. This was a National Science Foundation funded project to develop an instrument for scientific data visualization, like an advanced telescope or microscope. Our priority in the design of the system therefore has been to significantly improve image resolution and quality, because compared to other human sensory channels, vision is still the one that provides the greatest bandwidth to the human brain over touch, smell and sound.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for making the suggested changes.
Author Response
Thanks for the suggestions.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
This paper is very well written and presented and i would love to see it published. It is obvious that this paper is the result of hard work. However, having 30+ references is a requirement for publishing to a scientific journal. I will also ask the editor to comment. I am still not convinced about the contribution. Without sufficient references, a solid related work and comparison with the state of art, it is difficult to convince the readers about the novelty and contribution of this work. No significant changes were implemented in terms of extending your related work. You can publish this work as a technical report but not as scientific journal. If the authors decide to review the paper and resubmit, i will also advice them (optional) to submit a video presentation of their work. I am sure that a video from such a project will make the work look more attractive.
Author Response
I will add the required 21 extra references in our new manuscript.
