[sahkopoyta]

>You're not supposed to visualize this data directly -- instead, you combine those values in a simple formula to obtain a height value, then you use that value to create visual maps.

Isn't this exactly what has been done here? You can even see the legend at the right side of the screen.

[trs8080]

This still shows the uncombined components. What does the color blue represent in this map? Is it a height? -500m? 5000m? 6000m? What does white represent? This map is a fundamental misrepresentation of the actual data.

This is the formula:

height = -10000 + ((R * 256 * 256 + G * 256 + B) * 0.1)

[IshKebab]

No it doesn't. I think you're misunderstanding the site. It deliberately uses a weird banded colour scale so you can see where height changes on a fine scale.

They didn't interpret the data wrong.