              Announcing version 1.1 release of VMD 
             --------------------------------------- 
The Theoretical Biophysics group at the University of Illinois and the
Beckman Institute would like to announce the availability version 1.0
of the program VMD, a package for the vizualization and analysis of
biomolecular systems.  This software is being made available to the
structural biology research community free of charge, and includes the
source code for VMD, documentation, and a precompiled binary for
Silicon Graphics workstations running version 5 or later of the IRIX
operating system.  The postscript documentation (still being updated
to include the new features in version 1.1) includes an installation
guide, a users guide, and a programmers guide for interested
researchers.  VMD also provides on-line help through the use of an
external HTML viewer such as Mosaic or Netscape.

New in this version
-------------------

  This biggest improvement in version 1.1 is the development of
scripting functions for molecular analysis and the 3D display of the
results.  These include:
	* Querying the internal VMD data base for information about
           a atom or set of atoms
	* Built-in functions for computing the center of mass,
	   radius of gyration, etc. of an atom selection
	* Complete script control over atom position information
	* Adding and modifying graphical items (lines, spheres, etc.)
           in the display window to build user-defined scenes
	* Best (RMSD) fit alignment of molecules using the Kabsch method
	* Addition of Tcl-X and Tcl-DP
	* More control over internal VMD parameters
	* Vector and matrix routines for coordinate analysis

Other improvements include:
	* Mouse controls for modifying the coordinates of an atom,
	   residue or fragment (useful for structure building)
	* New rendering styles including cartoon
	* Orthographic perspective mode
	* New atom selection methods
	* Automatic secondary stucture determination (using STRIDE)
	* Ability to add forces to a molecular dynamics simulation
	* Support for the Radiance and ART ray tracers
	* Reduced levels of detail for faster visualization of 
	   complicated structures

and, of course, many bug fixes.

  ==============   Basic information about VMD   ===================

Obtaining VMD
-------------
A more complete description of VMD is available via the VMD WWW home page:
        http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/

The software itself is available via anonymous ftp in the directory:
        ftp://ftp.ks.uiuc.edu/pub/mdscope/vmd
(please see the README file in this directory for the latest version info)

Email questions to vmd@ks.uiuc.edu.

Features
--------
  VMD is designed for the visualization and analysis of biological
systems such as proteins, nucleic acids, lipid bilayer assemblies,
etc.  It may be used to view more general molecules, as VMD can read
standard Protein Data Bank (PDB) files and display the contained
structure.  VMD provides a wide variety of methods for rendering and
coloring a molecule: simple points and lines, CPK spheres and
cylinders, licorice bonds, backbone tubes and ribbons, cartoon
drawings, and others.  VMD can be used to animate and analyze the
trajectory of a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation.  In particular,
VMD can act as a graphical front end for an external MD program by
displaying and animating a molecule undergoing simulation on a remote
computer.

The program has many features, which include:
        o Many molecular rendering and coloring methods.
        o Stereo display capability.
        o Extensive atom selection syntax for choosing subsets of atoms for
           display (includes boolean operators, regular expressions, and  
           more).
        o Integration with the program 'Babel' which allows VMD to read many
           molecular data file formats.  Even without the use of Babel,
           VMD can read PDB files, as well as CHARMM- and X-PLOR compatible
           binary DCD files and X-PLOR compatible PSF files.
        o Ability to write the current image to a file  which may be 
           processed by a number of popular raytracing and image rendering
           packages, including POV-Ray, Rayshade, Raster3D, and Radiance.
        o Extensive graphical and text-based user interfaces, which use the
           Tcl package to provide full scripting capabilities.
        o Extensions to the Tcl language which enable researchers to write
           their own routines for molecular analysis
        o Modular, extensible source code using an object-oriented design in
           C++, with a programmers guide describing the source code 
	   structure.
        o Integration with the program NAMD, a fast, parallel, and scalable
           molecular dynamics program developed in conjunction with VMD
           in the Theoretical Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois.
           See the NAMD WWW home page for more info:  
                  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd

          VMD can be used to set up and concurrently display a MD simulation
          using NAMD.  The two programs, along with the intermediary
          communcations package (called MDComm) constitute the 'MDScope'
          environment.  

Availability
------------
  VMD runs on Silicon Graphics workstations and may be compiled for
HP-UX workstations if the NPGL library (a commercial port of the SGI
GL library, available from Portable Graphics, Inc.) is available on
your system, or to IBM 6000s with GL.  Two versions of the
distribution are available, one including the complete VMD source
code, and one which just includes a precompiled VMD executable for SGI
IRIX version 5.x.

  VMD, NAMD, and the entire MDScope environment are part of an ongoing
project within the Theoretical Biophysics group to help provide free,
effective tools for molecular dynamics studies in structural biology.
For more information, see http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/MDScope/.
This project is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the
National Science Foundation.

						March 25, 1996
