Hillshade Mapping in Real Time

Armand Emamdjomeh, Andy Woodruff and Sahil Chinoy have been inspiring each other to create hillshade maps in Observable. Each of the following Observable Notebooks contain maps which allow you to change the hillshade effect on a map in real-time by changing the azimuth and elevation of the hillshade light source.

Sahil's Hillshader allows you to adjust the azimuth and elevation of the lighting effect on a map of the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i. When you adjust these parameters the map hillshade updates live on the map. Hillshade includes a series of multiple small maps which show the effect that different azimuth and elevation settings have on the map of the island.

Armand Emamdjomeh's Mapbox Hillshade and Satellite Map Blending allows you to apply different hillshade styles to a satellite map in Mapbox. Armand's Notebook also allows you to adjust the azimuth and elevation of the light source but this time applies the hillshade in real-time to an interactive map rather than a static image.

Andy Woodruff's DIY Hillshade also applies a hillshade effect to an interactive map, only this time to a terrain map layer in a Leaflet powered map. As with the above examples you can adjust the azimuth and elevation of the sun to see the hillshade effect applied to the terrain map layer in real-time.