Relief Shading

Overview

Relief shading adds a terrain layer to the map. This is especially helpful for area exploration or course planning.

Relief shading example

Setup

Relief shading requires elevation data. The Elevation Tutorial shows how to install it. Due to the massive amount of data required only offline elevation sources can be used for relief shading.

Consider excluding the elevation data from local virus scans.

Enable Relief Shading

Relief shading toolbar with buttons (left to right): Enable, Reduce Quality, Improve Quality

Select ‘Menu-Map-Relief Shading-Enable Shading’ or use the Relief Shading toolbar.

If the Relief Shading toolbar is not visible enable it using ‘Menu-View-Toolbars-Relief Shading’.

Caused by the huge amount of elevation data to be processed for creating the shading overlay it might take a while until the image is complete. A bar at the bottom of the map pane indicates the progress. Reducing the shading quality helps to avoid long waiting times.

Shading Parameters

‘Menu-Options-Preferences-Relief Shading’ offers parameters to adjust the look and feel of the shading.

Enable Shading

Basically enables/disables the shading in the same way as described in the chapter above.

Show Map

Uncheck this checkbox in order to show the relief but not the map content.

Z-factor

This value amplifies the shading effect. Values less than 1 damps the elevation effect, values above 1 intensify it.

Azimuth

This value defines the direction the shading affect is depicted. The most common value of 315 degrees represents the north-west direction.

Altitude angle

This value defines the illumination angle.