How do you read a NASA .hgt file in C#?

Question

Does anybody know how to read a NASA .hgt file in C#?

Apparently the question was asked in Python here: how to read NASA .hgt binary files

Answer 1

Use GDAL library (geographic data abstraction layer): it supports HGT files and it has C# binding using SWIG.

Edit: all you information you need is here.

From the FAQ:

The SRTM data files have names like "N34W119.hgt". What do the letters and numbers refer to, and what is ".hgt" format?

Each data file covers a one-degree-of-latitude by one-degree-of-longitude block of Earth's surface. The first seven characters indicate the southwest corner of the block, with N, S, E, and W referring to north, south, east, and west. Thus, the "N34W119.hgt" file covers latitudes 34 to 35 North and longitudes 118-119 West (this file includes downtown Los Angeles, California). The filename extension ".hgt" simply stands for the word "height", meaning elevation. It is NOT a format type. These files are in "raw" format (no headers and not compressed), 16-bit signed integers, elevation measured in meters above sea level, in a "geographic" (latitude and longitude array) projection, with data voids indicated by -32768. International 3-arc-second files have 1201 columns and 1201 rows of data, with a total filesize of 2,884,802 bytes ( = 1201 x 1201 x 2). United States 1-arc-second files have 3601 columns and 3601 rows of data, with a total filesize of 25,934,402 bytes ( = 3601 x 3601 x 2). For more information read the text file "SRTM_Topo.txt" at http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/srtm/Readme.html