R > Basic Charts > WebGL vs SVG in R
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WebGL vs SVG in R in R

How to create plots using WebGL


New to Plotly?

Plotly is a free and open-source graphing library for R. We recommend you read our Getting Started guide for the latest installation or upgrade instructions, then move on to our Plotly Fundamentals tutorials or dive straight in to some Basic Charts tutorials.

WebGL vs SVG in R

Recent versions of the R package include the toWebGL() function, which converts any eligible SVG graph into a WebGL plot. With WebGL, we can render way more elements in the browser.

WebGL with 50,000 points

library(plotly)
p <- ggplot(data = diamonds, aes(x = carat, y = price, color = cut)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.01)
fig <- ggplotly(p)
fig <- fig %>% toWebGL()

fig

More examples

Dash for R is an open-source framework for building analytical applications, with no Javascript required, and it is tightly integrated with the Plotly graphing library.

Learn about how to install Dash for R at https://dashr.plot.ly/installation.

Everywhere in this page that you see fig, you can display the same figure in a Dash for R application by passing it to the figure argument of the Graph component from the built-in dashCoreComponents package like this:

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly() 
# fig <- fig %>% add_trace( ... )
# fig <- fig %>% layout( ... ) 

library(dash)
library(dashCoreComponents)
library(dashHtmlComponents)

app <- Dash$new()
app$layout(
    htmlDiv(
        list(
            dccGraph(figure=fig) 
        )
     )
)

app$run_server(debug=TRUE, dev_tools_hot_reload=FALSE)