What happens when I connect to a raster layer from NextGIS Web in QGIS?

NextGIS Connect
1

I have several raster layers hosted in NextGIS Web and I access them from QGIS. In this setup, is the entire raster downloaded to my machine?

For example, if the raster is ~10 GB, would QGIS transfer the full 10 GB?

2

Hi there!

Short answer is NO. That’d be crazy :slight_smile:

Long answer is IT DEPENDS.

In most cases, the raster is added via COG (cloud optimized GeoTIFF) mechanism. I.e. it gets added almost instantly and then updated while you navigate your map. Zoom in on a raster – more data is downloaded in the background.

In rare cases it may happen that COG is intentionally turned off for the raster. In this case it get downloaded as a whole.

3

Thank you! I checked that my rasters are COGs, so that’s perfect.