Rendering techniques for molecular visualization on mobile devices

The processing power and graphics capabilities of mobile devices have grown at such a rate that tasks which once required a desktop workstation can now be performed on a handheld computer. One area enabled by this is mobile molecular visualization. An open source application has been written to display 3-D structures of molecules on Apple, Inc.’s iOS devices. These molecules can range in size from small compounds to larger theoretical structures for molecular nanotechnology. The rendering techniques used to enhance the display of these structures will be described, as well as the optimizations applied to make these techniques performant on handheld devices.