About 3D Elevation Map
3D Elevation Map turns open satellite data into real, interactive 3D terrain for every country, all 50 US states, the seven continents and the whole planet. Every map is built from the Copernicus GLO-30 digital elevation model and rendered as actual relief you can grab, tilt and spin — with the elevation figures computed directly from that model.
Who builds it
The site is built and maintained by Marko Visic, a physicist and pharmacist from Slovenia. He holds a BSc in Physics and a Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) from the University of Ljubljana.
His background is in the quantitative sciences — measurement, data and computation — and that is the foundation this project is built on: a physicist’s approach applied to open elevation data, turning raw digital elevation models into accurate, reproducible terrain maps and statistics.
How the data is made
Every map starts from the Copernicus GLO-30 model — the European Space Agency’s global surface model, which records the height of the ground about every 30 metres. Each territory is cut to its official outline using geoBoundaries data, and every figure — mean, median, range and the share of area above each height — is computed directly from that masked grid of heights, not copied from another source.
Highest points get extra care: a coarse grid averages a sharp summit downward, so the model is re-read at its native ~30 metre resolution around each candidate peak and checked against a researched, source-cited value. A page is published only once its data passes that validation.
GLO-30 captures landforms rather than individual buildings or trees, and very small or very steep features can be smoothed. So treat these as terrain models accurate to the tens of metres — good for understanding the shape of the land, not for navigation, engineering or legal use. Where a fact can’t be traced to the model or a cited source, it is left off the page rather than filled in.
Read the full methodology, or get in touch on the contact page.
Elevation data: Copernicus GLO-30 (ESA). Boundaries: geoBoundaries. Built by Marko Visic.