HAHAHAHAHAHA! These guys really make me laugh!
"This notion of perceptual resolution is not clear to me. Does it mean that the further object is seen as more blurred? But, when the further object is fixated, it is the nearer one that may appear more blurred, without being perceived as smaller."
Resolution in the representation of an object in an image or in a spatial model, refers to the amount of representational medium (retinal surface, perceptual model volume) which is devoted to the representation of that object. The farther house occupies less surface area on the retina than the nearer house, and therefore is represented at lower retinal resolution. Similarly, the farther house occupies less volume in the perceptual model than does than the nearer house, and therefore it too is represented at lower perceptual resolution.
This reviewer is either incapable of thinking outside of his conceptual "box", or he is deliberately trying to be difficult!
"The authors talk about the decrrease of depth resolution as a function of depth, but how could the system step outside itself and come to know that it has this property?"
"step outside itself!" Thats a scream!
Once again, a particular depth value in the world, such as the depth of the farther house in the perceptual model, occupies less thickness in the depth dimension than the depth of the nearer house does in the perceptual model. Thus the depth resolution in the model decreases monotonically with distance from the center.
Where do they find these reviewers? And more significantly, why are they not held accountable for their idiocy when they reject these papers?
"the authors still claim that their model explains why shrinking objects are perceived as receding, but that they have not answered my query as to how in their model a shrinking object (such as a balloon) can be correctly perceived as shrinking."
Once again, the reviewers would like to see a model that produces one clearly specified output for any particular input, with the rigid determinism of a digital computer algorithm. But Gestalt theory demonstrates that perception itself does not have this quality. A shrinking circle can be interpreted perceptually as either a shrinking circle or a receding circle of fixed size. The percept is fundamentally bistable between those interpretations. The present model proposes the kind of model that would be required to account for that kind of multistability, because the shrinking circle stimulus would produce a shrinking cylindrical projection into the volumetric matrix, which can be interpreted perceptually either by a perceptual structure that remains at one depth but shrinks in radius in synch with the stimulus, or by a structure that recedes in depth in such a way that its represented radius remains constant.
I get the feeling that I am wasting my breath- this reviewer will never understand!