The view command sets the viewing angle for `splot`s. It controls how the 3D coordinates of the plot are mapped into the 2D screen space. It provides controls for both rotation and scaling of the plotted data, but supports orthographic projections only. It supports both 3D projection or orthogonal 2D projection into a 2D plot-like map.
Syntax:
set view <rot_x>{,{<rot_z>}{,{<scale>}{,<scale_z>}}}
set view map
set view {no}equal {xy|xyz}
show view
where <rot_x> and <rot_z> control the rotation angles (in degrees) in a virtual 3D coordinate system aligned with the screen such that initially (that is, before the rotations are performed) the screen horizontal axis is x, screen vertical axis is y, and the axis perpendicular to the screen is z. The first rotation applied is <rot_x> around the x axis. The second rotation applied is <rot_z> around the new z axis.
Command `set view map` is used to represent the drawing as a map. It can be used for contour plots, or for color pm3d maps. In the latter, take care that you properly use zrange and cbrange for input data point filtering and color range scaling, respectively.
<rot_x> is bounded to the [0:180] range with a default of 60 degrees, while <rot_z> is bounded to the [0:360] range with a default of 30 degrees. <scale> controls the scaling of the entire `splot`, while <scale_z> scales the z axis only. Both scales default to 1.0.
Examples:
set view 60, 30, 1, 1
set view ,,0.5
The first sets all the four default values. The second changes only scale, to 0.5.