3D Terrain Globe

Chapters 6 & 7

A real global digital elevation model, rendered with CesiumJS and streamed live from AWS's public Terrain Tiles dataset — no API key, no server.

Fly To

Vertical Exaggeration — 1.5×

1×5×

About This Data

Elevation comes from AWS's Terrain Tiles Open Data (s3://elevation-tiles-prod) in Mapzen's Terrarium encoding — global 1–30 arc-second SRTM/ETOPO1/3DEP data, PNG-encoded so elevation can be decoded from ordinary RGB pixels in the browser. Imagery is Esri World Imagery. Both are fetched directly by CesiumJS as you pan and zoom — nothing is pre-baked.

Loading CesiumJS and streaming terrain…

Decoding elevation tiles from AWS Open Data as the globe renders.