Dynamic visual overlay for enhanced terrain perception on remote control construction equipment

During operation of a machine, an understanding of terrain features is critical. Accordingly, disclosed embodiments augment a video stream, captured by a camera mounted on the machine, with terrain information. In particular, an overlay is generated on at least one image frame. The overlay, which may comprise one or more semi-transparent bands, may cyclically recede from a foreground to a background of the image frame(s), cyclically advance from a background to a foreground of the image frame(s), or cyclically move horizontally across the image frame(s). The overlay may be colorized to illustrate the height of the terrain underneath the overlay.