Modernising Narupa

The Narupa software framework is at the core of many projects in the lab. This software stack is what allows us to do multi-user interactive molecular dynamics in Virtual Reality. The main elements are the server and the Narupa iMD VR client. The server drives the molecular simulation, sends the trajectory that is generated to the clients in real-time, and synchronises data such as the avatar positions amongst the clients. The Narupa iMD client connects to the server from which it receives the frames from the simulation to display in Virtual Reality. We are actively working on the Narupa framework.

As time passes, and despite constant maintenance, the codebase is ageing. Because of this, we cannot simply make Narupa iMD work natively on the Meta Quest headset, despite the series of headsets being the most common nowadays. We are, therefore, working on modernising many aspects of the code. Amongst other things, we are reworking the internals of Narupa iMD and its interface to accommodate the OpenXR standard, we are reworking our network stack to remove deprecated libraries, and we are retooling our quality control process. We hope to release a native quest version of Narupa iMD in early 2024.

We are also working on the server. A common joke in software development is that everything gets rewritten in Rust. The Narupa server does not escape that trend! This new server is easier to distribute compared to the current Python server that requires to install a pretty heavy Python distribution, it has a graphical user interface in addition to the command line interface to be more accessible to different profiles of users, and it also shows better performance in multi-user scenarios. It is, however, less flexible. Therefore, we keep maintaining the Python servers as the preferred way to experiment with new features and create customised workflows. As for the reworked Narupa iMD, we expect a release of the new server in early 2024.