I have downloaded a hgt file from EarthExplorer but when I try to load it on QGIS I get an error "GDAL provider cannot open GDAL dataset".
I was under the impression that hgt files were supported. It this a known issue? Is there any workaround?
QGIS – How to Open .hgt Files on QGIS 3.2
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Related Solutions
Make sure you set the full path. This error seems to occur when you only give gdal the name of the file.
Your VRT is a vector dataset. gdal_translate is used to convert between raster formats not from vector to raster.
Instead, you can use:
ogr2ogrto output a shapefile or other vector format,- QGIS Processing toolbox | GDAL | Vector Conversion | Convert format
gdal_rasterizeto burn the points to a tiff, or- QGIS Processing toolbox | GDAL | Vector Conversion | Rasterize
gdal_gridto interpolate the points to a surface raster (I noticed some elevation fields in your VRT).- QGIS Processing toolbox | GDAL | Raster Analysis | Grid (*)
If the underlying CSV file is meant to be a raster dataset in XYZ format, gdal/QGIS should be able to read it directly as a raster if you drop the additional fields and just keep the "pnt_lon", "pnt_lat" and "pnt_height" (OR "pnt_demheight" but not both), sorted by lat then by lon. You could then use gdal_translate xyz.csv out.tif
GDAL supports reading and writing ASCII gridded XYZ raster datasets (i.e. ungridded XYZ, LIDAR XYZ etc. must be opened by other means. See the documentation of the gdal_grid utility).
Those datasets are ASCII files with (at least) 3 columns, each line containing the X and Y coordinates of the center of the cell and the value of the cell.
The spacing between each cell must be constant and no missing value is supported. Cells with same Y coordinates must be placed on consecutive lines. For a same Y coordinate value, the lines in the dataset must be organized by increasing X values. The value of the Y coordinate can increase or decrease however. The supported column separators are space, comma, semicolon and tabulations.
The driver tries to autodetect an header line and will look for 'x', 'lon' or 'east' names to detect the index of the X column, 'y', 'lat' or 'north' for the Y column and 'z', 'alt' or 'height' for the Z column. If no header is present or one of the column could not be identified in the header, the X, Y and Z columns (in that order) are assumed to be the first 3 columns of each line.
Best Answer
Keeping the original filename is essential because the HGT format is a very simple file format (simply a 3601×3601 array of short integers which represent the terrain heights) with no embedded metadata. There is nothing within the file to indicate which part of the Earth’s surface it covers, nor are any separate metadata files provided. The position is encoded into the file’s name. For example, the file N19W157.hgt covers a 1°×1° section of the earth at latitude 19° North and longitude 157° West. It is therefore imperative that these files are not renamed, as the only way to determine the coordinates is by parsing the file name.