Finally got round to vibe coding something in Godot this summer for my city. It used GeoTIFFs on AWS S3 at s3://copernicus-dem-30m/ for elevation. No authentication required, each tile covers 1°×1°. Combined this with OpenStreetMap. Was enough to get started and satisfy curiosity. As you state, lots more that could be done.
Finally got round to vibe coding something in Godot this summer for my city. It used GeoTIFFs on AWS S3 at s3://copernicus-dem-30m/ for elevation. No authentication required, each tile covers 1°×1°. Combined this with OpenStreetMap. Was enough to get started and satisfy curiosity. As you state, lots more that could be done.