VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2019 - 22:16:56 CDT

I'm working on patching FLTK for MacOS X Catalina.
Regarding OpenGL being deprecated on MacOS, we'll have to see what
options become practical here. VMD is only one of thousands of apps
affected by Apple dropping support for OpenGL. It's unclear whether
the cost of rewriting the core VMD renderer for a proprietary API
would be justified. Apple is falling farther and farther behind
state-of-the-art rendering technologies compared to both Linux and Windows,
so I worry that it would be a waste to try and support their proprietary
Metal APIs. I'm more hopeful that some kind of emulation scheme might
become viable.

Best,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sun, Oct 06, 2019 at 12:09:24PM -0400, Reza Esmaeeli wrote:
> Dear VMD team,
>
> As you already know, macOS Catalina is being released, meaning that Mac users should compile a 64-bit version of VMD from source. I was wondering if you have any recommendations about the best protocol of doing so (and any complications it may involve).
>
> I also know that Apple won???t be supporting OpenGL anymore and I wish you could make a new VMD for Mac from scratch using Metal and other Mac-optimized things. I would rather pay for a great new VMD for Mac than go back to linux.
>
> Best,
> Reza 

-- 
NIH Center 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/