# is there any way to not display terrain

**URL:** <https://community.cesium.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-not-display-terrain/5693>\
**Category:** CesiumJS\
**Created:** [June 22, 2017, 4:07pm UTC](https://community.cesium.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-not-display-terrain/5693 "2017-06-22T16:07:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rogerz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7cd45c/32.png) [@rogerz](https://community.cesium.com/u/rogerz)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 4:07pm UTC](https://community.cesium.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-not-display-terrain/5693/1 "2017-06-22T16:07:46Z")

</div>

Is there any way to have a viewer have a terrain (so that things like scene.globe.getHeight will work) but have it not be displayed in the actual viewer.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rachel\_Hwang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d78d45/32.png) [@Rachel\_Hwang](https://community.cesium.com/u/Rachel_Hwang)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2017, 1:00pm UTC](https://community.cesium.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-not-display-terrain/5693/2 "2017-06-27T13:00:02Z")

</div>

Hi there,

getHeight is a synchronous approximation that requires terrain to be visualized, but you can use sampleTerrainMostDetailed to do the same thing even when terrain is off (be warned that this is an asynchronous operation that contacts the server).

[http://cesiumjs.org/Cesium/Build/Documentation/sampleTerrainMostDetailed.html](http://cesiumjs.org/Cesium/Build/Documentation/sampleTerrainMostDetailed.html)

Hope that helps,

- Rachel