VICS-II

VICS-II is the latest version of the VICS project, which was initially developed by Fujio Izumi and Ruben A. Dilanian as part of a bigger project called VENUS. Now, you might be wondering what VENUS stands for – it’s all about Visualization of Electron/NUclear densities and Structures.

History of VICS-II

The VENUS project kicked off in mid-2001. By the end of 2003, I got to know about it when most basic features were already in place. However, the early versions of VICS/VEND had some serious performance hiccups and didn’t work well on my computer. So, I took a closer look at the source code and started making some fixes.

Fixing Issues

I managed to commit a few fixes, but not everything could be solved. Some problems were rooted in the programming model while others came from the toolkit itself. Then, in June 2004, one of the main developers, Dilanian, left the project. This made it tough for both VICS and VEND to keep moving forward.

Starting Fresh

That’s when I decided to build new programs from scratch! I used some original code but also incorporated a new toolkit called wxWidgets.

Compatibility and Availability

You’ll be happy to know that VICS-II runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And guess what? It’s available for free for non-commercial users!

The VENUS Package

The VENUS package includes four separate programs:

• VICS: VIsualization of Crystal Structures


• VEND: Visualization of Electron/Nuclear Densities


• PRIMA: PRactice Iterative MEM Analyses


• ALBA: After Le Bail Analysis

Requirements for Installation

If you’re planning to use VICS-II, here are some requirements you should keep in mind:

• - GTK+ version 2.4.x


• - Mesa OpenGL libraries


• - No need for wxWidgets library since it’s statically linked.

What’s New?

This release comes packed with some cool updates:

• - A new feature from VESTA lets you remove symmetry operations so structures can be treated as "P 1".


• - Added an option to eliminate duplicate atoms – super handy when changing space groups!


• - You can now handle complex lattices like "C 1" or "F 1" for space groups "P 1" and "P -1".


• - Fixed issues with CIF formats displaying rhombohedral settings as hexagonal lattices.


• - Improved reading space group info from Wien2K formats.


• - Corrected bugs where lattice planes weren’t showing up properly under certain conditions.