Grovi is a powerful and very fast program to visualize large molecules using
high quality rendering.
It is capable of showing the movements of the atoms as calculated by molecular simulations
programs such as the GroMacs program mentioned above and visualize the results
of analysis in real time.
The final program will be truly amazing as it will allow true interactive
interaction with running simulations. Allowing to change parameters
in the simulation and get real time results from the simulation and the analysis
programs. This involves clever algorithmes and some good psychology so people get new
feedback from simulations at least once every six seconds. Currently
normal molecular simulations may take days to produce output.
The first step is the delivery of 'grovi light'. This will be a viewer
for molecules in general and a viewer to see the molecules move in time.
Currently there is at least a dozen of programs around that allows you to
do just that, but grovi already runs at least 10 times faster for
showing large molecules in ball & stick model. And the balls are
of much higher quality.
Also most people want to make a video at some point to present their
results. This is a very time consuming and very user unfriendly
process in the existing programs. Grovi light comes (perhaps not in the
very first version, but at least soon afterwards) with a extremely
userfriendly animation tool, based on what animation artists use
in other programs, but this is not yet seen in molecular visualisation
programs.
Grovi is not yet available, but the light version is expected to be ready
in the second half of 2000.
Unfortunatly, my professor retired, and the one who took over his job
doesn't want people to work on visualisation at all. So work on Grovi
stopped in january 2000. This is one of the reasons I changed my job.
