It seems like these are the issues in your code:
- You need to convert
lat1 and lon1 to radians before calling your function.
- You may be scaling
radialDistance incorrectly.
- Testing a floating-point number for equality is dangerous. Two numbers that are equal after exact arithmetic might not be exactly equal after floating-point arithmetic. Thus
abs(x-y) < threshold is safer than x == y for testing two floating-point numbers x and y for equality.
- I think you want to convert
lat and lon from radians to degrees.
Here is my implementation of your code in Python:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from math import asin,cos,pi,sin
rEarth = 6371.01 # Earth's average radius in km
epsilon = 0.000001 # threshold for floating-point equality
def deg2rad(angle):
return angle*pi/180
def rad2deg(angle):
return angle*180/pi
def pointRadialDistance(lat1, lon1, bearing, distance):
"""
Return final coordinates (lat2,lon2) [in degrees] given initial coordinates
(lat1,lon1) [in degrees] and a bearing [in degrees] and distance [in km]
"""
rlat1 = deg2rad(lat1)
rlon1 = deg2rad(lon1)
rbearing = deg2rad(bearing)
rdistance = distance / rEarth # normalize linear distance to radian angle
rlat = asin( sin(rlat1) * cos(rdistance) + cos(rlat1) * sin(rdistance) * cos(rbearing) )
if cos(rlat) == 0 or abs(cos(rlat)) < epsilon: # Endpoint a pole
rlon=rlon1
else:
rlon = ( (rlon1 - asin( sin(rbearing)* sin(rdistance) / cos(rlat) ) + pi ) % (2*pi) ) - pi
lat = rad2deg(rlat)
lon = rad2deg(rlon)
return (lat, lon)
def main():
print "lat1 \t lon1 \t\t bear \t dist \t\t lat2 \t\t lon2"
testcases = []
testcases.append((0,0,0,1))
testcases.append((0,0,90,1))
testcases.append((0,0,0,100))
testcases.append((0,0,90,100))
testcases.append((49.25705,-123.140259,225,1))
testcases.append((49.25705,-123.140259,225,100))
testcases.append((49.25705,-123.140259,225,1000))
for lat1, lon1, bear, dist in testcases:
(lat,lon) = pointRadialDistance(lat1,lon1,bear,dist)
print "%6.2f \t %6.2f \t %4.1f \t %6.1f \t %6.2f \t %6.2f" % (lat1,lon1,bear,dist,lat,lon)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Here is the output:
lat1 lon1 bear dist lat2 lon2
0.00 0.00 0.0 1.0 0.01 0.00
0.00 0.00 90.0 1.0 0.00 -0.01
0.00 0.00 0.0 100.0 0.90 0.00
0.00 0.00 90.0 100.0 0.00 -0.90
49.26 -123.14 225.0 1.0 49.25 -123.13
49.26 -123.14 225.0 100.0 48.62 -122.18
49.26 -123.14 225.0 1000.0 42.55 -114.51
This works in Java, computing a value 0...7 for the eight directions:
import static java.lang.Math.*;
int compass = (((int) round(atan2(y, x) / (2 * PI / 8))) + 8) % 8;
The result maps to the compass as follows:
0 => E
1 => NE
2 => N
3 => NW
4 => W
5 => SW
6 => S
7 => SE
Best Answer
The approximate conversions are:
This doesn't fully correct for the Earth's polar flattening - for that you'd probably want a more complicated formula using the WGS84 reference ellipsoid (the model used for GPS). But the error is probably negligible for your purposes.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude
Caution: Be aware that latlong coordinates are expressed in degrees, while the
cosfunction in most (all?) languages typically accepts radians, therefore a degree to radians conversion is needed.