Real-time auto incrementing ggplot in R

Question

This thread answers how to create incremental plots in R with a real-time effect.

I want to do the same thing with ggplot2 instead of R's base plot. Directly copying from the answer in that link, I tried this but it didn't work:

n=1000
df=data.frame(time=1:n,y=runif(n))
window=100
for(i in 1:(n-window)) {
  print(i)
  flush.console()
  ggplot(df) + geom_line(aes(x=time, y=y), size=0.7) + xlim(i,i+window)
  Sys.sleep(.09)
}

I guess the image rendering for ggplot2 works differently. Is it possible to create a real-time updating effect with ggplot2?

Ideally, I want to be able to display multiple geom_lines. But I guess the logic will be the same.

Also, is it possible to achieve this when the plot is "Zoom"ed in in R-Studio?

Answer 1

It's not clear where you're going with this, but this code will produce an HTML animation that renders smoothly. It will take a while (about a minute) to create the animation though.

library(animation)
library(ggplot2)
# your data
n  <- 1000
df <- data.frame(time=1:n,y=runif(n))
window <- 100
# create the animation
saveHTML({
for(i in 1:(n-window)) {
  print(ggplot(df) + geom_line(aes(x=time, y=y), size=0.7) + xlim(i,i+window))
}
})