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Using the Joystick in the Graphics Window

The Windows version of VMD provides support for the Windows joystick driver, and will enumerate all available joystick devices at startup time. The joystick interface employed in VMD is quite simple, allowing the use of three control axes to translate, rotate, and scale the molecule. The joystick interface assumes a device with at least two buttons. The first joystick button resets the view in the display window, and the second button cycles through each of the available joystick modes. When VMD first attaches to each of the joysticks, they are initially disabled so that miscalibrated joysticks do not adversely affect the VMD session. Each joystick is initially enabled by pressing its second button to switch modes. All joysticks are independently controlled such that multiple joysticks can control different control axes, and multiple users could interact with the program with separate controls.



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