Digital elevation data represents the height of the land surface above sea level - the basic information component of a topographic map.

Digital Terrain from Planetary Visions is a precision product based on the best publicly-available digital elevation data. For ocean areas we can include bathymetry data, representing the depth of the seafloor. Digital terrain data is suitable for the production of 3D computer graphic stills or animations and for use in flight simulation software and computer games. The data may be map-projected, hill-shaded and colour-coded to produce high-quality background imagemaps for GIS use, print and electronic atlases.

Our digital hill-shading techniques allow flexibility in the appearance of a topographic map as well as consistent shading across a range of terrain types. The result is a clearer and more accurate view of the landscape than is possible from manual hill-shading or photographs of sculpted models. We can combine our terrain data with coastlines, rivers and lakes from digital map sources to offer a complete topographic map layer, or provide the basic topography for use with your own digital map data.

Digital Terrain Data can be supplied as raw 16-bit gridded terrain files, 8-bit intensity-height images (bumpmaps), or as triangulated or meshed polygon files. Digital Terrain Imagemaps are available as monochrome hill-shaded and 24-bit coloured images with a range of colour schemes optimised for use in print or on-screen. Digital Terrain from Planetary Visions is the basis of the topographic maps in the range of atlases from educational publisher Dorling Kindersley, as well as several electronic atlases and the Maps in Minutes™ series of vector mapping tools.