http://www.slideshare.net/KevinModzelewski/pyston-talk-11101...
It's an argument I haven't heard anywhere else (and one I'm not in a position to substantiate) but presumably Dropbox, who use Python at scale, have as valid perspective on this issue as anyone.
That's just an anecdote but obviously you should check your use case and find what tool is best suited for your project. There is no magic cure-all, but in my experience pypy comes close.
I'm pretty confident it's also going to be a magic speed boost for a decent size web app I work on, but it remains to be tested with this particular app so I'll check it out... The most bulletproof way to find out what's faster is to test it.
"elevation map" doesn't mean anything in terms of projection, you can project an elevation map onto a 2D display in a hundred ways, "raycaster" does mean something here, a raycasted elevation map or raycasted heightfield is what this is, anyway it's just an example of what types of problems can be solved 10x faster with pypy.