Terrain RGB by MapTiler

The MapTiler Terrain RGB is a composite of high-resolution DEMs (Digital Elevation Models) with global coverage, curated and processed by our geodata team. Not only you can use this data to enrich your map styles with hill shade or colored slopes, but you can also use it in applications - such as elevation profiles, microwave link planning, etc. The MapTiler Terrain RGB covers the land, and MapTiler Ocean RGB covers the ocean floor. 

How it works

MapTiler Terrain RGB tileset is available up to zoom level 14. Elevation data provides height above the sea level in meters for every single place in the world, measured for regions of approximately 30x30 meters. The elevation model is split into tiles and each tile has elevations encoded into standard RGB image format where each pixel color (red, green, blue) can be calculated into elevation.

Splitting DEM into raster tiles has all the advantages of a tiled map. The main one is low traffic for web applications because the browser loads only the tiles in the current view with appropriate resolution, and only downloads additional data when the user zooms in or pans the map.

If you open any tile from the tileset in an image viewer, you would see something like this:

Don’t be confused by the unusual look you will see at first glance: this is not yet a final product meant for direct viewing; it’s a base for adaptation.

Application

As the data contains the encoded elevation values directly and it’s even possible to manipulate them on the fly, there are many areas of applications. We list the most common examples below, including interactive JavaScript tools.

Hillshading

By adding the elevation data to your map, you can create a nice visual shaded relief. It’s even possible to change the hill shading colors and light direction, which you can do in our visual map style editor Customize.

DEM hillshading is already used in our Outdoor map, which is available for free under MapTiler maps. See our interactive hillshading example.

MapTiler also provides the Hillshading tileset. However, you might want to use the RGB terrain tileset because it covers a bigger area of the Earth and allows you to customize the color of the hillshade. 

Hypsometry

Hypsometry uses the measurement elevation and depth relative to mean sea level. The traditional color model used mostly for the relief model in geographical maps contains green color for lowlands, yellow for highlands, brown for mountains, and a different tone of blue for bathymetry. See our interactive flood simulator as an application example.

Terrain profiles

Terrain profiles have a wide range of applications. You can use them for trip planning, terrain analysis, microwave links planning, pipelines, and electric wires planning, etc. You can use MapTiler SDK JS to implement an elevation profile control like this: