height30

height30 is a cross‑platform software library designed to generate, render, and analyze height maps for digital terrain models. It releases under the MIT license and was first made available to the public in 2021 by the developer consortium GeoSoftware. The name stemmed from the typical resolution of the height data used in the early Alpha v1 release, which was 30 meters per pixel, a compromise between detail and performance.

The library is written in C++ for core performance, with bindings for Python, JavaScript, and Rust to support a broad range of applications. Height30 uses a 16‑bit signed integer grid to store elevation values, allowing terrain data to be stored with less memory than conventional floating‑point formats while preserving sub‑meter accuracy for many use cases. Rendering is performed through an OpenGL 4.5 context, supporting real‑time shading, bump mapping, and built‑in tessellation for high‑detail visualization.

Typical usage scenarios include game development, geographic information systems (GIS), and architectural visualization. Height30 can import and export common formats such as GeoTIFF, HGT, and binary height maps. It also offers a command‑line tool for converting raw elevation data to the library's internal format, and a minimalistic GUI for previewing terrain tiles.

Over the first year of release, the community adopted height30 in several open‑source projects, notably the open‑world shooter “Deep Earth” and the GIS‑focused open‑source platform OpenTerrain. Reviewers praised its lightweight footprint and the ease of integrating with existing pipelines, though some noted its lack of built‑in support for spherical Earth projections in the early versions.

Future development goals aim to add full support for spherical raster projections, extend the API to expose procedural noise generators, and implement a WebAssembly build to allow in‑browser terrain rendering.