How can I make a scatter plot interactive?

I was reading an article today about IBM's SAGE computer, where it would show radar maps, and the users would use a light gun and point it at an object on the map(like a plane), and it would display information about that flight.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/the-never-before-told-story-of-the-worlds-first-computer-art-its-a-sexy-dame/267439/

However, with a scatter plot, I can't seem to find a way to do this. My scatter plot has a lot of points and information to go with them. I can't display all of this information on the screen at once without cluttering it up and making it unreadable (which is a problem that the light gun above addresses). One thing I've tried is making the font very small, and zooming very closely until the points separate themselves, however, this doesn't work for the most part. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Use a larger resolution screen :)

More seriously: replace clusters of points with cluster summary icons. When zooming occurs, use the zoom PostAction callback to decide what is in view and what is not, and if warranted create new levels of cluster summary icons that could be zoomed in on.

Keep presenting summaries until the points of interest would be far enough apart to make it worthwhile presenting them individually. It would probably be fine to have a mix of single points and cluster icons on a particular graph, with the summaries being used in denser areas.