VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 24 2012 - 10:08:14 CDT

Hi,
  It'll be a while yet before it becomes feasible to run a full-fledged
VMD instance on a phone. Current phones don't really contain enough RAM
to support a full VMD implementation, so we haven't yet started working
on a full scale port of the program to Android or iOS. I would expect in
a few more years that the current limitations of these platforms will go away
and it will become feasible to run a full instance of VMD on a phone.
In the mean time, we have been working on small VMD remote control
and auxiliary display applications for Android and iOS. This has allowed
us to begin developing multitouch interfaces for VMD for the phone and
tablet devices, and this will be instrumental if/when we begin porting
VMD itself to run directly on these types of mobile devices.

For now, your best option may be to write a VMD network interface script
and have your iOS app remote control VMD and return the 3-D scene/geometry
required to render the molecule on the phone as needed. Beyond that, there
are a bunch of simple molecular display example codes for iOS and Android
that one could probably use if your goals are simple.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 10:59:51AM -0400, Samuel Schlachter wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Are there were any plans for porting/supporting VMD on iOS in the future.
> I'm working on a project where we would like to embed a VMD instance
> inside of an iOS application. I read this
> (http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/mailing_list/vmd-l/17428.html) post
> where you made a couple of suggestions. Unfortunately, iOS doesn't support
> Java or webGL for the time being.
>
> Thanks!
> Sam Schlachter
>
> --
> Sam Schlachter
> University of Delaware
> Global Computing Lab Research Assistant
> Computer and Electrical Engineering Masters Student
> 503-327-9357 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/       Fax: 217-244-6078