Atomic detail visualization of photosynthetic membranes with GPU-accelerated ray tracing

•We present atomic-detail visualization of cellular processes responsible for photosynthesis in purple bacteria.•We describe parallel rendering approaches used to facilitate high-fidelity visualizations of 100M-atom photosynthetic membrane complexes.•We present an improved GPU-accelerated ray tracing engine optimized to enable high performance rendering of very large molecular scenes, yielding performance increases up to a factor of 1.46x vs. previously published results.•Unique ray tracing features for stereoscopic panoramic and omnidirectional projections required for planetariums and other so-called “full-dome” theater environments are described with example images.•VMD interactive ray tracing preview via progressive rendering allows visualizations and movies to be designed using full-quality lighting and shading, while remaining fully interactive, and supporting preview with head-mounted displays such as the Oculus Rift.