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    TINKER and Force Field Explorer are now being distributed within self-extracting installers for Linux, Macintosh OS X (Panther 10.3 and above) and Microsoft Windows. Included are binary TINKER executables, source code, example/test files, documentation and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) needed by Force Field Explorer. This is a private JRE that will not affect any other JREs that might be installed system wide. The exception is Mac OS X, where only a system JRE is allowed.

    For each platform, a launch script/exe located in the top level installation directory named “ffe” will launch Force Field Explorer. If TINKER and Force Field Explorer are installed system wide, users may want to copy some/all of the files in "tinker/test" and/or "tinker/example" to a directory where they have write permissions (key files will need to be edited to point to their respective parameter files).

    On some platforms, double clicking the ffe.jar file in the “tinker/jar” directory will also launch Force Field Explorer. In this case, your system JRE will be invoked instead of the private JRE in the install kit. This is fine, as long as your system JRE is a 1.4.2 version that includes Java3D 1.3.1 extensions.

    Here are the install kits, with platform specific instructions below:

Current Major Version: Force Field Explorer 4.2

Major Release Date: June 2004

Last Minor Revision: July 30, 2004

After downloading the installer, double click to start installation. Force Field Explorer can then be launched from an icon or the Start Menu.

HP-UX, Solaris and SGI-IRIX will eventually be supported after further testing.

The biggest determinant of Force Field Explorer rendering performance is the combination of your graphics card and driver. In the past, drivers for Linux generally yielded poorer performance than their Windows equivalent, although this is less of an issue with newer cards as support from vendors has improved.