The Camera Navigator plugin provides a mean to navigate the camera as if it were a ship. In normal mouse rotation, the scene is rotated around an axis going through a user defined center for each molecule. But when using the Camera Navigator, the user can rotate the scene using axes centered on the camera. This allows for motions such as "turning your head around", which are not easily accomplished using the conventional VMD controls.

Currently, the Camera Navigator is operated by means of the keyboard, using pre-defined keys:

Key	Function
Q/A	thrust forward/backward
I/K	rotate camera up/down
J/L	rotate camera sideways left/right
U/O	roll camera left/right

Settings

The plugin comes with speed controls, which define by what increments each tap of a keyboard key will rotate or advance the scene. Setting the thrust or rotation speed controls to bigger numbers will make the thrust or the rotation faster.

Requirements

The forward/backward thrust will only work properly in perspective mode. In orthographic mode, this functionality still works, but since the molecule will not shrink or grow with distance, there will be no visual feedback of the motion of the camera.