Towards Commodity, Web-Based Augmented Reality Applications for Research and Education in Chemistry and Structural Biology

This article reports prototype web apps that use commodity, open-source technologies for augmented and virtual reality to provide immersive, interactive human-computer interfaces for chemistry, structural biology and related disciplines. The examples, which run in any standard web browser and are accessible at https://lucianoabriata.altervista.org/jsinscience/arjs/armodeling/ together with demo videos, showcase applications that could go well beyond pedagogy, i.e. advancing actual utility in research settings: molecular visualization at atomistic and coarse-grained levels in interactive immersive 3D, coarse-grained modeling of molecular physics and chemistry, and on-the-fly calculation of experimental observables and overlay onto experimental data. From this playground, I depict perspectives on how these emerging technologies might couple in the future to neural network-based quantum mechanical calculations, advanced forms of human-computer interaction such as speech-based communication, and sockets for concurrent collaboration through the internet -all technologies that are today maturing in web browsers- to deliver the next generation of tools for truly interactive, immersive molecular modeling that can streamline human thought and intent with the numerical processing power of computers.