Contours and mountain peaks in feet

This article describes how to switch contour lines and mountain peaks from meters to feet in your MapTiler Cloud map, which might be useful to US users in particular.

Important notice

To use the Contours tileset in your maps on MapTiler Cloud, you need to add it in the Advanced editor with the DATA SOURCES button. By default, contours and mountain peaks are included in the Topo, Outdoor, and Winter map styles.

Contours

By default, contours come in meters in the MapTiler maps. To switch your contours to feet, you need to use the Advanced Editor. The key step is to switch the Source Layer of all layers that are displaying contours from contour to contour_ft. For more detailed information about Contours attributes, please check the Countours schema.

In the following example of the Outdoor map style, we are changing the Source Layer to contour_ft in four layers that are derivated from the Contours tileset:

1. contour_index
2. contour
3. contour_label
4. contour_label-glacier

After changing, all your contour layers will be switched to feet. This change will be visible globally.

Moutain peaks and volcanos

Apart from the contours, it is possible to have the mountain peaks and volcanos in feet. The attributes working with elevation in feet are:

• ele_ft (elevation in feet)
• customary_ft (value 1 for peaks in a location where feet is used as a customary unit)

Thanks to these two attributes, it is possible to display the mountain peaks in feet for locations where it is used as a customary unit (USA), while the rest of the world will have peak elevations in meters. For more detailed information about Mountain peaks attributes, please check the MapTiler Planet schema.

The behavior of customary units is again used in Topo, Outdoor, and Winter map styles. There are separate layers created for mountain peaks and volcanos in feet (peak-us, volcano-us) and in meters (peak, volcano).

Layers in feet are using ["has", "customary_ft"] filter and "{name:latin} {ele_ft} ft" expression in the text field.

Whereas, layers in meters filter out the customary_ft attribute ["!has", "customary_ft"] and have a modified expression for meters in the text field: "{name:latin} {ele} m".

Conclusion

With the switch of the Source Layer to contour_ft, you can easily change the contours in your map from meters to feet. Mountain peaks and volcanos can be visualized in feet in the USA, whereas they can keep the elevation in meters in the rest of the world.

Useful links

Improve terrain visualization in glacial regions
MapTiler Contours | Schema
MapTiler Planet | Schema | Mountain peak
How to work with Customize tool and Advanced editor together in MapTiler Cloud