Guest Editor's Introduction to the Special Section on the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2014

The IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) is the leading venue for publishing the latest Mixed and Augmented Reality research, applications, and technologies. This special section presents significantly extended versions of the five best papers from the IEEE ISMAR 2014 proceedings. Within the past few years, Augmented Reality (AR) has reached a critical mass in both research and commercial applications. It is now becoming truly feasible to use augmented reality to place graphics anywhere at any time. However, although the basic capabilities exist, many open research problems continue. This collection of papers considers underlying issues and technologies. IEEE ISMAR 2014 had 89 paper submissions; each paper was reviewed by at least four experts in the field. An international programcommittee of 15 ARexperts invited reviewers, led discussions, invited a rebuttal by the paper authors and prepared a consensus review. To select the final papers for publication, an online two-day PC meeting was held connecting three continents, where each paper was discussed. Thirty-five papers were accepted either as long or short publications, giving an overall acceptance rate of 40%. An independent Award Committee reviewed the highest- ranked submissions again to determine the awards for Best Paper and Honorable Mention. For this special section, the authors of the award papers were invited to submit an extended version of their conference papers, with a clear focus on additional content that expands the scientific contribution of the original conference paper. A standard TVCG reviewing cycle was initiated in which all papers were reviewed, feedback was provided, and papers were revised to suit. Out of all submitted papers, less than 6% appear in this TVCG Special Section.