              Announcing version 1.2b1 release of VMD 
             --------------------------------------- 
  The Theoretical Biophysics group at the University of Illinois and
the Beckman Institute would like to announce the availability version
1.2b1 of the program VMD, a package for the vizualization and analysis
of biomolecular systems.  This software is being made available to the
structural biology research community free of charge, and includes the
source code for VMD, documentation, and precompiled binaries for SGIs,
HPs, and Linux.  The postscript documentation (still being updated)
includes an installation guide, a users guide, and a programmers guide
for interested researchers.  VMD also provides on-line help through
the use of an external HTML viewer.

A full description of VMD is available via the VMD WWW home page:
        http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/


New in this version
-------------------

  This biggest improvement in version 1.2b1 support for platforms
other than GL-based SGIs.  In addition to the full source and SGI
binary distributions, VMD is now available for HP-UX (tested under 9
and 10) and Linux.  Ports to other platforms, most notably AIX, will
be available soon.

  Greatly enhanced Tcl scripting commands for performing molecular
analysis, writing scripts, developing tutorials, etc.

  New rendering styles, a fast (and cheap) solvent accessible surface
and C-alpha and P trace method, and improvements to the existing
styles.

  New output renderer formats: Postscript, VRML and STL (a
stereo-lithography format)

  Support for Amber structure and animation file formats

  And of course, many bug fixes.

  ==============   Basic information about VMD   ===================

Features
--------
  VMD is designed for the visualization and analysis of biological
systems such as proteins, nucleic acids, lipid bilayer assemblies,
etc.  It may be used to view more general molecules, as VMD can read
standard Protein Data Bank (PDB) files and display the contained
structure.  VMD provides a wide variety of methods for rendering and
coloring a molecule: simple points and lines, CPK spheres and
cylinders, licorice bonds, backbone tubes and ribbons, cartoon
drawings, and others.  VMD can be used to animate and analyze the
trajectory of a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation.  In particular,
VMD can act as a graphical front end for an external MD program by
displaying and animating a molecule undergoing simulation on a remote
computer.

The program has many features, which include:
	o No limits on the number of molecules, atoms, residues or
	  number of animation frames, excepting available memory.
        o Many molecular rendering and coloring methods.
        o Stereo display capability.
        o Extensive atom selection syntax for choosing subsets of atoms for
           display (includes boolean operators, regular expressions, and  
           more).
        o Integration with the program 'Babel' which allows VMD to read many
           molecular data file formats.  Even without the use of Babel,
           VMD can read PDB files, as well as CHARMM- and X-PLOR compatible
           binary DCD files and X-PLOR compatible PSF files.
        o Ability to write the current image to a file  which may be 
           processed by a number of popular raytracing and image rendering
           packages, including POV-Ray, Rayshade, Raster3D, and Radiance.
        o Extensive graphical and text-based user interfaces, which use the
           Tcl package to provide full scripting capabilities.
        o Extensions to the Tcl language which enable researchers to write
           their own routines for molecular analysis
        o Modular, extensible source code using an object-oriented design in
           C++, with a programmers guide describing the source code 
	   structure.
        o Integration with the program NAMD, a fast, parallel, and scalable
           molecular dynamics program developed in conjunction with VMD
           in the Theoretical Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois.
           See the NAMD WWW home page for more info:  
                  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd

          VMD can be used to set up and concurrently display a MD simulation
          using NAMD.  The two programs, along with the intermediary
          communcations package (called MDComm) constitute the 'MDScope'
          environment.  

Availability
------------

The software is available via anonymous ftp in the directory:
        ftp://ftp.ks.uiuc.edu/pub/mdscope/vmd/

The filenames of the different distributions are:
  The complete source:
    vmd-1.2b1.all.tar.gz

  Precompiled binaries for different platforms
    vmd-1.2b1.bin.IRIX5.tar.gz
	Works for IRIX 5.x and 6.x using GL
    vmd-1.2b1.bin.HPUX9.tar.gz
	Works for HP-UX 9 and HP-UX 10 using Mesa emulated OpenGL
    vmd-1.2b1.bin.LINUX.tar.gz
	Tested under RedHat with 1.2.13 and 2.0.27 kernals, uses Mesa

Please email any questions to vmd@ks.uiuc.edu.


  VMD, NAMD, and the entire MDScope environment are part of an ongoing
project within the Theoretical Biophysics group to help provide free,
effective tools for molecular dynamics studies in structural biology.
For more information, see http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/MDScope/.
This project is funded by the National Institutes of Health (grant
number PHS 5 P41 RR05969-04) and the National Science Foundation
(grant number BIR-9318159).

						Andrew Dalke
						vmd@ks.uiuc.edu
						March 22, 1997
