Subject: Announce: VMD 1.7.1 released!

From: John Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 23:00:40 -0600

Dear CCL,
  We are happy to announce the release of VMD 1.7.1, a molecular
visualization and analysis program for MacOS X, Unix, and Windows.
The new version can be downloaded from the VMD web page:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/vmd-1.7.1/

I've included a brief list of the most noteworthy features
and improvements in the new version.  The full 
README file is available here:

Please feel free to email us if you have any questions.
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/vmd-1.7.1/README.html

Thanks,
  John Stone
  [email-masked]

What's new in VMD 1.7.1?
------------------------
  New Features
    o New volume rendering features including isosurface display,
      volume slicing with support for hardware accelerated 3-D 
      texture mapping, and a Tcl volume data loader interface.
    o Support for scanline-interleaved stereoscopic rendering for 
      hardware such as the Eye3D stereo glasses and decoders.
      These work on Linux, Windows, and most any other platform with
      VGA and USB connectors, and they don't require any special software
      in order to work with VMD.
    o First inclusion of VMD plugin architecture.  Initially used
      to provide the structure building capabilities of psfgen 
      in VMD.
    o Added "mol selupdate" and "$sel update" commands.  "mol selupdate" '
      causes automatic updates of the selection for the specified 
      representation.
    o The Windows version of VMD can now be run from a command line 
      with the use of the Windows "start" command, i.e. something like
      "start c:\vmd\vmd.exe -nt -e myscript.vmd" could be used to 
      start VMD if it were installed in directory c:\vmd.

  General Improvements and Bug Fixes
    o Includes a much faster version of Stride for secondary structure 
      calculation. 
    o Includes new version of the Tachyon ray tracer, 0.93.4.
    o Multi-level OpenGL stipple-based "screen door" transparency.  Now
      implements varying levels of transparency.
    o Improved support for WireGL cluster-based rendering and tiled display
      walls.
    o The IMD code now closes down active socket connections more 
      carefully, allowing the kernel to complete any in-progress
      write operations before closing the socket.
    o POV-Ray scene export improved with new camera parameters and
      support for orthographic views, shadow control, and matched 
      perspective camera views.
    o Tachyon scene export improved with new camera parameters for 
      matched perspective views with VMD.
    o Raster3D scene export improved with new camera parameters for
      matched perspective views with VMD.
    o The Windows version of VMD now reads "vmd.rc" for startup instead
      of ".vmdrc".  This makes it much easier to edit the startup files
      on Windows.
    o Replaced DNA example molecule with a better one.
    o H-bonds shown in the H-bond rep are now pickable.
    o Added code to read the unit cell data from Charmm trajectory files.
    o Improved robustness and error handling when reading Raster3D 
      scene files.  Fixed Raster3D file reading crash.
    o The "delete" option for atom selections no longer leaks memory
      in the case when it is used within a Tcl loop.  
    o Eliminated atom selection and Tcl related memory leaks 
    Fixed Bugs and PRs: 107, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178

  User Interface Changes
    o Users can select either FLTK or Tk file browsers according to
      their personal preference.  Some people prefer the Windows-like
      function of the Tk browsers, while others like the filename 
      completion of the FLTK file browser.  This is configured by setting
      the VMDFILECHOOSER environment variable.  The default browser for
      Windows is the Tk browser, for Unix systems the FLTK browser is 
      the default.
    o Reverted behavior of the edit form old "-1" index use.

  User Documentation Updates
    o New manual section for the sequence window
    o Updated sections regarding .vmdrc since Windows now uses vmd.rc instead.
    o Updated the betacolor example script included in the docs for 
      new versions of VMD.
    o Updated the animation scripts in the script library for new
      versions of VMD.
    o Improved index entries pertaining to lighting and shading.

-- 
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: [email-masked]                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078