Various VR molecular viewers I've ever tried (English)

I’ve tried VR molecular viewers.

Equipments: Oculus Rift + Touch

Why to view molecular structures

Structure of molecules sometimes explains how its specific property emerges. For example, the crystal structure of DNA molecules explained how it can be complementarily replicated. Using molecular viewer, you can see the molecular structures determined by experiments or computationally predicted. As molecular structures are intrinsically 3D objects, VR viewers may make it more exciting to view molecules.

ChimeraX

ChimeraX can launch its VR mode. It requires SteamVR installed. The models shown in the VR mode are really beautiful, for it’s the successor application of UCSF-Chimera. Especially, cartoon and stick representations look quite sharp and as if it’s made of solid metal.

ChimeraX https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/

On the VR mode https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/vr.html

Nanome

Nanome is a native VR molecular viewer developed by Nanome inc. I think Nanome seems to be the only native VR molecular viewer currently available. It works really well. Rendering is fast. Handling of objects is smooth. Hand interactions with molecular models are so impressive.

Nanome https://nanome.ai/nanome/

Those which I tried or I am trying.

PyMOL

It seems there is VR plugin for PyMOL. I’ve not tested this yet.

VMD

I believe this software has been supporting VR since a long time ago, but I do not know what’s going on now. I’ve not tested this.

UnityMol

It seems it has VR mode, but there’s no hint to launch it.

Other

I tried some software and even built a few from the sources, but they did not fit my needs.

Conclusion

I tried various VR molecular viewer and found some of them good.