Unleash the Power of 3D Plots in R Programming

Creating 3D Surfaces with Perspective

R programming offers a wide range of functions to create stunning 3D plots. One of the most versatile and powerful functions is persp(), which allows you to create 3D surfaces in perspective view. This function takes three essential variables: x, y, and z, where x and y define the location along the x- and y-axis, and the height of the surface (z-axis) is represented by the matrix z.

Plotting a Cone: A Simple Example

Let’s dive into an example by plotting a simple right circular cone. To do this, we need to prepare our variables. We’ll use the seq() function to generate a vector of equally spaced numbers, and then apply the outer() function to create a matrix of values for every combination of x and y.

x <- seq(-1, 1, length.out = 50)
y <- seq(-1, 1, length.out = 50)
z <- outer(x, y, function(x, y) sqrt(x^2 + y^2))

Bringing the Plot to Life

Now that we have our variables ready, let’s create the 3D surface using