VRML file format

VRML is a portable, platform-independent, and flexible file format for the transport of 3D graphical information. It can transport static scenes, animation, and multimedia. 

Standard VRML files are readable ASCII text. A binary compressed file format is still being discussed. The color, material, and lighting model of VRML is the same as the OpenGL graphics library model. This model is powerful, although very expensive imaging features, such as shadows... 

VRML has been found to be a very useful visualization format for chemistry. The only major disadvantage is that VRML files do not contain easily recognizable structures, only balls, cylinders, and triangle strips. The automatic recovery of structure data from these files suitable for further processing is difficult, but has been performed,An increasing number of computational chemistry programs add VRML output support in order to make their visualizations usable for WWW presentation, especially in the context of electronic publishing. More about this topic can be read in Internet-based Computational Chemistry Tools in this encyclopedia. 

A notable hybrid between representation by geometrical objects and structure data is the Molecular Inventor (MI) system from Silicon Graphics. MI is based on the standard Inventor file format, which is very similar to VRML 1,0, In addition to normal Inventor nodes, a MI file contains additional nodes which describe a chemical structure and attached physicochemical data. Because both arbitrary visualizations and structure-oriented data for potential extraction and further processing are stored together in one file, the best features from both approaches are combined. The major problem is portability MI viewers are available for free, only for Silicon Graphics platforms. Commercial versions for PCs can now be purchased. Compared to the much easier and generally free availability of viewers both for pure VRML and for chemical MIME data, this severely reduces the general acceptance of this product. 

VRML is adapted from a subset of the Open Inventor ASCII File Format of Silicon Graphics, Inc., extended by networking capabilities, such as hyperlinks. With the network-... 

Molden can display molecular geometries in a variety of formats, including lines, tubes, ball and stick, ribbons, and CPK. The user has some control over colors and sizes. Molden also has features designed for the display of proteins and crystal structures. The display can be exported as postscript, VRML, Povray, and image files. It can also be configured as a chemical mime viewer. 

In order to visualize the results of MLP calculations for a given set of parameters and molecules, a LipoDyn output file for the molecular surface can be color-coded by the MLP values and displayed in VRML 2.0 format... 

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