Simon, When PyMOL starts up, it prints out the OpenGL rendering information to standard output GL_VENDOR, GL_RENDERER, etc.
If it mentions Mesa, then acceleration is disabled. If it mentions nVidia, then you should be getting acceleration. PyMOL's speed depends mainly on the quality of your graphics accelerator, so if it still seems slow after acceleration is enabled, then your only recourse is to buy a more powerful graphics card. Cheers, Warren -- Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D. Principal Scientist . DeLano Scientific LLC . 400 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 213 . South San Francisco, CA 94080 USA . Biz:(650)-872-0942 Tech:(650)-872-0834 . Fax:(650)-872-0273 Cell:(650)-346-1154 . mailto:war...@delsci.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Vsevolod (Simon) Ilyushchenko [mailto:sim...@cshl.edu] > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 8:43 AM > To: Warren DeLano > Cc: pymol-users@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: Re: [PyMOL] File size? > > Warren, > > Thank you for your answer. I have an Nvidia card on my > desktop with Nvidia drivers which I think include OpenGL > support. PyMOL is still slow. How can I find out whether > PyMOL is using hardware OpenGL or not? > > Also, if I'm running PyMOL on a Linux server from, say, a > Windows desktop, do I have to have hardware OpenGL support in > Linux or in Windows? > > Thanks, > Simon > > Warren DeLano wrote on 11/14/2005 08:17 PM: > > Simon, > > > > Most likely you need to install vendor-specific OpenGL drivers to > > enable hardware acceleration (Linux can't ship with them > because they > > aren't open-source). Refer to the web site for your > graphics card vendor. > > > > Without such drivers, PyMOL falls back on software OpenGL > rendering, > > which is much slower than RasMOL's more specialized > molecule rendering > > engine. With a decent OpenGL graphics card and installed drivers, > > PyMOL's performance should meet or exceed RasMOL. > > -- > > Simon (Vsevolod ILyushchenko) sim...@cshl.edu > http://www.simonf.com > > "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." > > Henri Bergson > > > >
