rgl scene not showing in knitted html document under Rstudio 1.2.5001

[ajs22]

Hi

Using Windows 10, Rstudio 1.2.5001, R 3.6.1 , htmlwidgets 1.5.1, rgl 0.100.30, knitr 1.25

I am having the same problem as this user - i.e. if I knit an RGL plot it just leaves a white gap and does not display (their issue was closed recently but I dont think a solution was presented??)

Rstudio 1.2 not knitting rgl object in rglwidget

e.g. even for the simple example out of the online manual:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rgl/vignettes/WebGL.html

library(rgl)
plotids <- with(iris, plot3d(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, Petal.Length, 
                  type="s", col=as.numeric(Species)))
rglwidget(elementId = "plot3drgl")

Can anyone see this plot in a knitted html file?

Thanks in advance

Alex

[vesper]

Hi,
I am the user in your referred post. I eventually made it work with Rstudio 1.1,
I have tried couple of weeks trying to find solution to Rstudio 1.2 but with no luck, I wish you can find the solution.

[lepovas]

Same problem here, rgl not rendering in the html output under Rstudio 1.2.1335

But the following still works for me:

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
library(rgl)
knitr::knit_hooks$set(webgl = hook_webgl)


```{r echo=FALSE, webgl=TRUE}
with(iris, plot3d(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, Petal.Length, 
                  type="s", col=as.numeric(Species)))

[dmurdoch]

I think there are two issues:

1. On some systems, RStudio doesn't enable WebGL, so it can't display rgl scenes in the internal browser. See https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/5678. If you look at those HTML files in an external browser like Firefox or Chrome, you'll see the rgl output. I have a system like that, and can't see output from @lepovas's suggested fix in RStudio, but I can in Firefox.
2. As well, sometimes it is producing files where the rgl output isn't visible anywhere. I'm trying to track down what's going wrong with these. A workaround that seems to fix this is to run options(rgl.useNULL=TRUE) before library(rgl). That's usually a good idea to include because it prevents lots of popup windows during knitting, but it shouldn't be necessary.