VMD-L Mailing List

From: Benjamin Goldsteen (bzgnyc_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 20:49:02 CST

FYI,
Panther (MacOS X 10.3) appears to have fixed the
OpenGL problem that caused VMD to run slow when the
axes were enabled. VMD 1.8.1 is very fast on my
AlBook with ATI 9600 graphics card when booted in
Panther. This is not to say that the new sphere code
isn't a good idea in general.

Also, but, unrelated to VMD, Panther's X11 also also
fixes a problem that caused MOLMOL's bitmap plotting
to generate garbage bitmap files (I believe it was
something related to pbuffers).

It might be wise to wait for the imminent MacOS X
10.3.1, but, overall, it looks like they cleaned up a
few things in Panther. 

----
Hi, 
  The Axes being disabled are really only a temporary
workaround, 
as other things can also cause the slowdown, but I've
already rewritten 
the sphere rendering code in VMD to avoid this problem
in the next 
version of VMD (1.8.2), so the next version will
perform much better 
in call cases, and having the Axes on or off should
not trigger this 
performance problem ever again. 
Thanks, 
  John 
On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 11:12:39AM -0700, Charles
McCallum wrote: 
> I've always had the axes disabled, so I never
noticed the slowdown. 
> On my 1.25GHz AlBook the speed is quite nice and
smooth (due mostly to 
> the 9600 video card, no doubt!). 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> Mike 
> On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 05:00 US/Pacific,
Dafydd Jones wrote: 
> 
> 
> > Hi, 
> >  I have recently upgraded my machine from a G3 400
MHz Powerbook to 
> > a G4 1GHz Powerbook and now VMD 1.8.1 (and 1.8)
runs very very 
> > slowly on my new machine. Does anybody have any
idea why this is? 
> > Both machines are running 10.2.8. The OpenGL
renderer on my present 
> > machine used by VMD is ATI Radeon 9600 OpenGL
Engine whereas on my 
> > older machine it is Ati Rage 128 Pro OpenGL
engine. My OpenGL 
> > framework on the G4 is OpenGL 1.2.4.10.0 as it is
on my old 
> > machine. 
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