Three.js widgets for creating interactive 3D visualizations in R and Shiny applications.
rthreejs is an R package that provides Three.js-based widgets for creating interactive 3D visualizations within R and Shiny applications. It solves the problem of bringing high-performance, WebGL-accelerated 3D graphics to the R ecosystem, allowing data scientists and analysts to build engaging 3D plots without leaving their R workflow.
R developers and data scientists who need to create interactive 3D visualizations for data exploration, network analysis, or presentation in Shiny apps, R Markdown, or RStudio.
Developers choose rthreejs because it offers a simple, R-native interface to powerful Three.js graphics, enabling complex 3D visualizations with minimal code while seamlessly integrating with popular R tools like igraph, Shiny, and htmlwidgets.
Three.js widgets for R and shiny
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Renders directly in RStudio, Shiny apps, R Markdown, and web browsers with minimal code, leveraging the htmlwidgets framework as highlighted in the README.
Uses WebGL acceleration for smooth, interactive 3D graphics, with performance improvements for large graphs via buffering and custom shaders, as noted in version updates.
Integrates with igraph for external graph layouts, offering greater variety and control over network visualizations, a key change in version 0.3.0.
Supports mouse-over labels, clickable animations, and crosstalk selection handles, enhancing user interaction and data exploration in visualizations.
Known problems on Windows RStudio require using external browsers for WebGL rendering, and fallback Canvas rendering is disabled, limiting cross-platform compatibility.
Features like crosstalk integration are used in non-standard, experimental ways, making them unreliable and prone to changes, as cautioned in the README.
Admitted limitations compared to alternatives, such as scatterplot3js being more limited than scatterplot3d, and globejs described as 'somewhat silly' in the README.
Requires installation via devtools from GitHub, not CRAN, which can be less convenient and stable for users preferring official repositories.