Elevation maps that read like an atlas

Changes since 2.14.2.

#New

• Elevation maps. Ask for an elevation, terrain, topography or relief map of a place ("Elevation map of Kilimanjaro", "Topography of the coast around Mombasa") and OrionAI draws it in one step:
  • Height colours, atlas style: green lowlands, then pale yellow, tan and brown uplands, with pale grey and white peaks. Where the colours start and end follows the real heights, so a coastal plain stays green and only high mountains reach white.
  • Blue only for water: ground at or below sea level is drawn blue. Land is never blue, however low it is.
  • Shaded relief blended into the colours: the shading is lit from the north-west and three more directions, so ridges, valleys and drainage lines stand out without greying the colours. Flat areas get extra vertical exaggeration so their shape still shows.
  • A key in round metres ("1,000 m", "2,000 m"…), from the lowest to the highest point in the area.
  • The highest and lowest points, marked on the map with their heights.
• Elevation inside areas. "Elevation map of Kenya's counties" draws the terrain only inside the counties, with their outlines on top. Ask for "average elevation of each county" when you want one colour per county.
• Elevation bands. Ask for bands ("in five elevation bands") and the bands break at round heights, such as 1,000–2,000 m, never at values like 1,470–1,750 m.

#Improved

• Later steps still read metres. Contours, slope or zonal statistics run on an elevation map use its heights, not its colours.
• Boundaries over an elevation map stay outlines. County or sub-county boundaries drawn on top of the terrain are thin unfilled lines, so they never tint the height colours, and the map's key is always the height key.
• The units of one place, not their neighbours. "Sub-counties of Nyeri" now keeps each sub-county that lies mostly inside the county. Edge slivers of neighbouring sub-counties, which appear because boundary sets never line up exactly, are left out.
• Clearer message when styling a grid. Asking OrionAI to restyle a grid result (slope, NDVI, elevation) now explains that its colours are already set and how to show bands, instead of "has no values".

#Fixed

• Elevation maps no longer come out grey. OrionAI used to lay the elevation over a separate grey hillshade at partial opacity, which washed out the colours.
• Low ground is no longer drawn as water. The old terrain colour scale started in sea blue, so the lowest land on any map, even at 1,400 m, looked like a lake.