Clockwork Micro’s terrain tiles allow developers to add elevation and topographic data to their maps. The underlying data for the terrain tiles are elevation data hosted by AWS. Clockwork Micro provides tools that access the underlying elevation data, compute the hillshade, aspect, or slope and either color or shade it according to the user’s specification. The total latency is under 200 milliseconds.
Types of Terrain Tiles We Offer
Hillshade Layer
One of the most intuitive representations of the terrain is hillshade. This layer is created by imagining the sun in a fixed position on the horizon and calculating the shading on the ground caused by hills and mountains. The hillshade layer brings a map to life and gives the viewer a sense for how hilly or mountainous an area is.
Slope Layer
The slope layer tool can show how steep the incline is. This can be used, for example, to show users whether a road is more gradual or not. This terrain tile allows developers to show the slope on any map, on any scale, from global down to the vicinity of a house and set the shading for the slope.
Aspect Layer
Our aspect terrain tool allows the user to dynamically set an aspect range. For example, one could color slopes based on an East to West partition. The partition could be set by the application, or the application can allow the end user to select a range and color the landscape accordingly.
Elevation Layer
The final terrain tile tool that Clockwork Micro offers is the elevation layer. This tile tool allows users to set an elevation threshold in a given location, and color all the regions above that threshold. The user also has the ability to adjust the color to their liking. For example, a software application may want to allow the end user to set an elevation threshold and then a color to color all the land above a certain elevation a chosen color.
Terrain Tile Styler
The Terrain Tile Styler is a simple GUI that lets you set a color relief for your terrain style. The Terrain Tile Styler shows a preview of the terrain style as you choose colors and values and lets you toggled between several settings. You can then copy the API request corresponding to the style you created. The tool is available now for styling raw elevation data and aspect, hillshade and slope are coming soon.
More on Terrain Tiles
Toggle All Layers - Mt. Fuji, Japan
Hillshade Layer - Colorado, USA
Interactive Slope - Quito, Ecuador