[R] Help with RGL package problem

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 15/12/2010 1:11 PM, David A. Johnston wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have been experiencing an odd error with the RGL package that I cannot
> figure out.  I have searched without luck for fixes to this problem on
> Rseek, Google, and the R-help-list.
>
> RGL used to work on my machine about a month ago.  It was a very useful
> tool.  The graphics device will not initialize now, and I cannot figure out
> why.
>
> When I try to load the package using ...
>
>> library(rgl)
>
> ... I get a warning message:
>
> Warning messages:
> 1: In rgl.init(initValue) : RGL: no suitable visual available
> 2: In fun(...) : error in rgl_init
>
> I also notice I cannot open a new rgl device:
>
>> open3d()
> Error in rgl.open() : rgl.open failed
>
>
> I am on MacOS 10.6.5.  X11 is installed and is working to my knowledge.

Are you running R (in a console) or R.app (the GUI)?    Does rgl work in 
the other one?  (They use different drivers.  In a console, rgl will use 
the glx driver, in R.app it will use agl.  It's possible support for agl 
has changed or gone away; I only have 32 bit MacOS 10.5.x, so I can't 
see what's going on in 10.6.5 or in 64 bit.)

Duncan Murdoch

> Does anybody have any suggestions to figure this problem out?  I tried
> reinstalling the RGL package (v0.92.794), I tried removing all but the base
> R packages, I tried installing from both source and binary, I tried
> re-installing R (v2.12.0).  No luck with any of these ideas.


>
>
>
> I'm appending my session info and installed packages:
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0/x86_64 (64-bit)
>
> locale:
> [1] C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
>> rownames(installed.packages())
>   [1] "base"      "boot"      "codetools" "datasets"  "grDevices" "graphics"
>   [7] "grid"      "methods"   "rgl"       "splines"   "stats"     "stats4"
> [13] "tcltk"     "tools"     "utils"
>
>
>
>
> Thanks,
> -David Johnston
>