Hi Steffen, There is no virtual keyboard in ChimeraX VR. So there is not a way to type commands. If you find certain commands useful that are not available in toolbar tabs you can use the Button Panel tool to define your own buttons that run commands. https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/buttonpanel.html This only works for commands that don't require some variable argument, like a residue number or model number. A virtual keyboard would allow typing in residue numbers, model numbers and other parameters. But it is not easy to add. ChimeraX is not built on a game engine like Unity or Unreal where you could just use a third-party virtual keyboard that someone has worked hard to develop. It is all hand implemented in Python. In general virtual keyboards are very cumbersome in VR and so only used as a last resort -- it is simply too tedious to chicken peck type. Also ChimeraX does not implement laser pointers which are the usual way virtual keyboards are used. So the bottom line is we simply haven't had the resources to implement a virtual keyboard and its utility is low. For the button to turn VR on and off we could add a toolbar button that you could add to the Home toolbar tab through customization. Or you can add "vr on" and "vr off" buttons yourself (not in the toolbar) using the buttonpanel capability. I would say that I think only about 10% of the work done in ChimeraX makes sense to do in VR. The other 90% is better done on a desktop display. So it has not been my goal to encourage doing all ChimeraX tasks in VR (e.g. ones where you need to type commands). If you are pursuing that idea of doing everything in VR you should really try Nanome which is a molecular VR application that does envision you doing everything in VR. https://nanome.ai/ Tom
On Nov 21, 2023, at 5:03 AM, Steffen Thomas via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Hello I'm currently looking into the interesting possibilities of ChimeraX and VR. As I am in a different room to my PC with my glasses, I access the PC desktop via SteamVR with ChimeraX open and start vr on in the command line. This works quite well with a virtual keyboard from SteamVR. Now I'm missing two things so far, which I probably just haven't found yet (I'm a VR newbie even though I've owned a GearView for some time now, but its capabilities are quite limited). Firstly, a virtual keyboard where I can enter commands in the command line with the blue or yellow cylinders (I have now found the command line in vr) and a button in the toolbar (for example in the Molecule Display area) that switches vr on or off, in the same way for example as show and hide ribbon. Are there any possibilities to realize this via python itself? Or plans to integrate something like this?
Many thanks to the great ChimeraX community and all those responsible.
Steffen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steffen Thomas
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