VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 18 2002 - 19:49:09 CDT

Dear VMD-L,
  We've just made a new test version of VMD 1.8 available
for download from the VMD web site. This version includes
many bug fixes and new features we have implemented since
VMD 1.8 alpha 16 was released about a month ago.

Mike Bach and I will be demonstrating this new version of VMD
along with JMV and BioCoRE at Siggraph 2002 next week:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/events/sg2002.html

The complete log of our VMD 1.8 development progress can be viewed here:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/vmd-1.8/devel.html

A more human-readable description follows:
------------------------------------------
The new version includes many user interface improvements and
additions, most notable are "double-clickable" representations and
molecules in the representations menu and the main menu. Double
clicking a graphical representation in the rep browser causes it
to be toggled on/off. This is a very nice/easy way to hide molecular
geometry when working with very large systems or with complex views that
utilize many simultaneous representations.

The new version includes many OpenGL rendering performance
improvements for the VDW and Points representations, special
Linux code which avoids some window-resizing performance and
event handling behavior problems many people have had with
XFree86 for a long time, tube animation is up to 30% faster for
large molecules, and some FLTK buglets with regard to user
interface rendering have been fixed.
Several new VMD plugins are now included in the new version,
all located in the bottom half of the "Tools" menu.

VMD 1.8 alpha 21 also includes greatly improved
Tachyon ray tracing features. Tachyon now works with orthographic
views and supports directional lighting for renderings which
look almost exactly as they do in the OpenGL window, for
opaque materials. Transparent materials still need some work.

Various internal VMD improvements have resulted in better
behavior when running in the CAVE. Run-time lighting and
color updates now work in the CAVE just as they do on a desktip
workstation finally. The CAVE code now uses new reader/writer
lock code instead of barrier synchronization, which works better
for CAVE systems that are setup with different numbers of renderer
processes and walls. This change has not yet been completed for VMD's
FreeVR code, but will come in a future rev of VMD.

The new MacOS X native version is now distributed only in "bundle" form.
The MacOS X version is now built with ACTC as the Sun, Linux, and SGI
versions have been, which provides a factor of three performance improvement
when displaying complex MSMS surfaces. (you can get MSMS for MacOS X
separately, as with the other Unix platforms...)
The new MacOS X version still doesn't have Tk functionality built-in, and
has the same limitations that VMD 1.8 alpha 20 had, so in most regards
its the same, we just wanted to release the new version so that everyone
is testing the same code base.

There are two new display commands of interest which are currently
implemented only on the Unix/X-Windows versions of VMD:
  display resize x y (resizes OpenGL window from script or prompt)
  display reposition x y (position OpenGL window from script or prompt)

Let us know if you have questions or problems using the test version
of VMD. I (John Stone) will be at Siggraph 2002 for the next week, but
I will attempt to answer user emails whenever I get an opportunity.
We value any user interface feedback people have and would definitely
like to be informed about any bugs or deficiencies in the new version
of the software.

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

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