VMD-L Mailing List

From: Dow Hurst (dphurst_at_uncg.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 06 2011 - 13:55:02 CST

John,
I would like to try out the web link, if you don't mind. I'm mainly wanting
to be able to look at gpcr crystal structures or our in house models of
gpcrs while mobile. On my iTouch I could use the molecules program. There
didn't seem to be any equivalent for android. The protein data bank has
plans for an android client in the next year to complement their iPhone/ipad
app. There is a new app for the apple devices called cmol, at cmol.org.uk,
that looks very interesting. However, if I can use either the Dolphin
browser or Firefox to view structures as you describe then that would
suffice for now. Taking measurements of dihedrals, distances, or bond
angles would be the next step. I did just find an older flash based viewer
on tufat.com but it doesn't show bonds, only vdw atom displays.
Thanks,
Dow
On Mar 6, 2011 2:39 PM, "John Stone" <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> Dow,
> The android Java client we have been working on (slowly) is
> meant as a way to use a smartphone as a 3-D pointer/interaction
> device for controlling a VMD session running on a normal computer
> (e.g. for presentations, meetings, etc).
>
> At the present time we don't have any serious plans to port VMD itself
> to Android. In order to run VMD on Android (even a limited subset),
> the GUI and the OpenGL rendering code would have to be changed to
> fit within the limitations of OpenGL ES and a touch screen interface.
> I would also have my doubts about the phone's battery life while running
> a big code like VMD. :-)
>
> One way you could display models from VMD on a smartphone and rotate them
> etc is to export the VMD scene as an X3D file (a feature of VMD 1.9) and
> then view it using one of the WebGL-enabled browsers. One of the latest
> beta versions of Firefox for Android is able to run WebGL, though I think
> in our last test it didn't quite handle all of the javascript required
> for X3DOM, which is a javascript X3D viewer that runs entirely in-browser
> with no plugin. I expect WebGL to become much more popular in the next
> few months as more browsers begin to support it. If you want to see an
> example X3D object embedded in a web page, let me know and I'll send
> you a test link to try out on your phone (requires a WebGL capable
browser).
>
> Jmol is undoubtably a better route for an interactive molecule viewer
> if the phone browsers support it.
>
> Cheers,
> John
>
> On Sun, Mar 06, 2011 at 12:24:15PM -0500, Dow Hurst wrote:
>> I read on the vmd-1.9 changelogs a blurb about an android Java client,
but
>> haven't found any other mention of this.A Is there any possibility of a
>> 3D molecular viewer for android based on vmd?A Right now, for the android
>> platform, there are no usable 3D protein or small molecule viewers. I'm
>> looking for something that would show sidechains and ribbons for proteins
>> but haven't found anything yet.
>> Thanks,
>> Dow
>
> --
> NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078