[Proj] Distance calculation

[Paul B. Anderson]

- Hi Everyone,

Not exactly on topic, but, I thought I would toss this out as another
distance calculation resource.

In the early 1990s I worked as a Visual Basic programmer for a government
contractor on a Pentagon War Gaming contract. My task was to develop a
'digital' sand table. One of the capabilities I was asked to put into the
program was the ability to measure distances between two points. Sol Katz
pointed me toward the 'Aviation Formulary' [
http://williams.best.vwh.net/avform.htm ] when I asked him for help. The
formulas there may not have the accuracy you are discussing, but they worked
well for the application I developed.

Take Care,
Paul

Paul B. Anderson FCCS (USN, Retired)
Kingsport, TN native living in Norfolk, VA
My Map Projection web site:
http://www.csiss.org/map-projections/index.html

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Karl Swartz <karl at kls2.com> wrote:

> > Zhang Xue-Lian (1985) The nested coefficient method for accurate
> > solutions of direct and inverse geodetic problems with any length.
> > Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Geodetic
> > Computations,  Direct and inverse distance
> > functions.              Cracow, June 18-21, 1985. Institute of
> > Geodesy and Cartography. Wasaw, Poland, ul. Jasna 2/4 pp 747-763
> >
> > since it's more accurate than the classical method due to Gauss for
> > long distances.
>
> How does this compare to Thomas Vincenty's algorithm (which can be found
> at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/inverse.pdf)?
>
>  -- Karl
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