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Comparison · Analytics
oblicubes vs vellumplot
A side-by-side editorial comparison of oblicubes and vellumplot — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
oblicubes vs vellumplot: at a glance
What is oblicubes?
A tiny grid renderer for oblique-projection cubes, complete since its first release.
oblicubes draws 3D cubes and cuboids in oblique projection as grid grobs, with ggplot2 geom wrappers and a height-matrix helper for turning elevation data into coordinates. The entire feature set arrived in the initial 0.1.2 release, adapted from coolbutuseless's isocubes and cj-holmes's isocuboids. The two releases since have widened compatibility rather than added anything.
What is vellumplot?
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
oblicubes vs vellumplot: editorial side-by-side
oblicubes
0.0ANALYTICS
A tiny grid renderer for oblique-projection cubes, complete since its first release.
◆ Current state
oblicubes draws 3D cubes and cuboids in oblique projection as grid grobs, with ggplot2 geom wrappers and a height-matrix helper for turning elevation data into coordinates. The entire feature set arrived in the initial 0.1.2 release, adapted from coolbutuseless's isocubes and cj-holmes's isocuboids. The two releases since have widened compatibility rather than added anything.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is finished and its maintainer is treating it that way. 1.0.0 removed the R 4.1 native pipe from examples specifically so earlier R versions could use it — reaching backward, not forward — and added image alt text. The only change since is swapping a deprecated dplyr call in examples.
◆ Prediction
Expect nothing beyond occasional dependency deprecation fixes; the release pattern shows a small, deliberately complete package being kept installable.
vellumplot
6.3ANALYTICS
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
◆ Current state
A new grammar of graphics built on the vellum vector engine, developing fast — ten releases in roughly three weeks — and now at its first tagged release. The distinguishing architectural claim is that the compiled plot is the scene, so a static export and an interactive widget cannot drift apart, and that it renders without a graphics device because vellum measures text itself. Accessibility is treated as a first-class output rather than an afterthought: tagged PDF with a navigable structure tree and alt text, a plot_lint() check, and colour-vision-deficiency simulation at render time.
◆ Where it's heading
The release sequence shows a grammar filling in ggplot2-parity features and specialist marks in parallel. Parity work landed as secondary axes, rich legend titles, and Sankey styling; the specialist end added categorical datashading, image marks, flow maps and edge bundling for dense graphs. Version 0.7.0 shows a willingness to break early — vsunburst() was removed outright in favour of one vhierarchy() constructor covering sunburst, icicle, treemap and circlepack — which is the right time to do it and suggests the API is still being consolidated toward fewer, more general constructors.
◆ Prediction
Expect more consolidation of near-duplicate constructors under type arguments and continued expansion of the declarative interactivity introduced in 0.7.0, now that the first tagged release has fixed a public API surface.
Alternatives to oblicubes and vellumplot
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either oblicubes or vellumplot.
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
See all oblicubes alternatives → · See all vellumplot alternatives →
Recent activity from oblicubes and vellumplot
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 14d agovellumplotFirst tagged release: one spec compiles to PNG, SVG, tagged PDF and a widget ⚡
- 19d agovellumplotFlow maps and edge bundling for dense graph plots
- 24d agovellumplotvhierarchy() replaces vsunburst(); declarative interactivity arrives
- 26d agovellumplotSankey crossing minimisation and per-branch sunburst colouring
- 29d agovellumplotSecondary axes land; rich legend titles stop clipping
- 1mo agovellumplotCategorical datashading in one call, plus image marks at data points
- 6mo agooblicubesExamples updated to dplyr::reframe()
- 1y agooblicubesR 4.1 pipe removed from examples; image alt text added
- 3y agooblicubesInitial release: oblique-projection cube and cuboid grobs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between oblicubes and vellumplot?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is oblicubes better than vellumplot?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellumplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to oblicubes?
Top oblicubes alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "oblicubes alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/oblicubes-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vellumplot?
Top vellumplot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellumplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellumplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.