BIMOVIS
STUDIO.

The viewer is built on NGL Viewer, which needs JavaScript and WebGL. Extensions that block scripts or trackers — NoScript, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Ghostery, a browser’s own strict tracking protection — can stop the viewer’s scripts or its requests to the structure databases, and the page then simply shows nothing.

Allow this site in the extension (and rcsb.org / ebi.ac.uk, which the structures come from), reload, or try a private window with extensions switched off to confirm that one of them is the cause.

Older browser versions do not support what the viewer needs. Use a current version of Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari; Internet Explorer and browsers more than a couple of years old are not supported.

On a browser that is up to date, check that hardware acceleration is switched on in its settings and that your graphics driver is current — without either, WebGL is refused or falls back to something far too slow.

It loads, but the full experience is made for a desktop or laptop with a mouse: the settings panels, dragging the panels around, quick previews and the render request all want screen space and precise pointing. Large structures can also exceed a phone’s graphics memory and refuse to load.

Turning a structure and looking at it works on touch. For everything else, open the same page on a computer.

Structures are fetched live from the RCSB PDB and the AlphaFold database. A four-character code that does not exist finds nothing, and if one of those services is down or blocked by your network, nothing loads until it is back.

Check the code, try again in a few minutes, or use Upload PDB to load a file you already have.

Large structures with a surface representation are demanding for any browser. Hide the solvent, lower the surface quality, switch to cartoon while you set the view up, and close other heavy tabs. Hardware acceleration (see above) makes the biggest difference.

Previews and renders happen on our GPU servers, not in your browser, and are queued when many people render at once — the progress bar shows where yours stands. If a preview fails, try again; if it keeps failing for one structure or style, tell us which one through the feedback form.

Use the Feedback form to reach the BIMOVIS team directly. Include the PDB code, your browser and what happened, and we will get back to you.