VRChem: A molecular modeling software for virtual reality
Otso Pietikäinen · Aaltodoc (Aalto University) · 2018
Understanding the often complex atomic-level three-dimensional structure of molecules and materials is crucial in chemistry,and many tools have been designed and created to help chemists visualize and examine these structures. Currently, the most popular tool is molecular modeling software designed for desktop computers. The 2D-representations of molecules these applications render, however, are not ideal for studying the three-dimensional structure, and better tools with support for true stereoscopic molecular 3D-representation are needed. For this purpose, we have created VRChem, a novel molecular modeling application for Virtual Reality featuring a modern 3D user interface. With VRChem and the necessary hardware, users can construct and modify molecules in a virtual reality environment using their bare hands. This thesis covers the development and technical details of the VRChem application and what is being planned for future versions. VRChem is built on the Unity game engine for multi-platform support and it has thus far been an adequate platform for the application. The current version was built as a prototype for user interface testing and is not suitable for professional or research use, but the planned updates, such as improved graphical user interfaces, performance optimizations and more accurate energy minimization methods could make it a functional application in the future.