Re^5: Perl and Solving Trig/Converting GPS to x,y Cords

[roboticus]

BrowserUk:

There are plenty of people who would be interested in mapping at the poles: Penguin and Polar Bear researchers, Multi-mega-conglomocorp oil exploration teams, eskimos, extreme sunbathers, etc.

I was unaware of the GPS difficulties, and the OP didn't really restrict the regions of interest...

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[BrowserUk]

I was unaware of the GPS difficulties,

Even without GPS inaccuracies at those latitudes; extraordinary measures need to be taken in the polar regions anyway.

The same Law of Cosines Spherical Geometry that work just fine for larger distances over most of the Earth's surface are entirely inadequate in polar regions.

For more details, see the GIS FAQ.

[roboticus]

BrowserUk:

Correct, and that's in line with what I'm saying: The law of cosines isn't involved in the conversion from 3D to 2D in all projections--it's inadequate to the task. Further in the FAQ it talks about the Haversine formula which suffers when the points are extremely far apart, rather than being close to the poles. All spherical to planar mappings suffer in one way or other. Without knowing what type of map the OP is using, we can't be certain in exactly which ways it will suck. 8^)

Even when the law of cosines is used, the Z-axis isn't always the the same as either the geographic N/S axis or the magnetic N/S axis. It all depends on the feature(s) the map is trying to portray.

...yet another pedantic weenie

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[BrowserUk]

Given that the area between the +-70° latitudes covers 95% of the Earth's surface and 99.8% of the world's population; and the 0.2% inaccuracy represents a 0.00016 mm on a standard large scale (1::25,000) map -- or, you'd need a map 800 meters wide in order to be able to detect the inaccuracy between the actual and calculated position of a point -- the "general case" is not required for the vast majority of cases.

Hence why I passed along the information that the general case is not usually required, without in any way impugning the accuracy of your post.

I was simply pointing out that unless you run an airline -- and one hopes they know what they are doing -- the simple 2D trig approach to mapping GPS coordinates to map coordinates is usually good enough.