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Re^3: Algorithm: point with N distance of a line between two other points

by Limbic~Region (Chancellor)
on Nov 04, 2010 at 02:05 UTC ( [id://869385]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: Algorithm: point with N distance of a line between two other points
in thread Algorithm: point with N distance of a line between two other points

japhy,
The shortest distance between two points on a sphere (forget that Earth is squished a bit) is the arc of the great circle passing between those two points so you may have reason for concern. You should read this and this (Cross-track distance). You may find that treating the surface of the sphere as a flat plane acceptable if your talking about a small enough area - otherwise, you need non-planar math.

Regarding your statement about MySQL query - I assume have no idea what built-in trig functions are available and I don't envy re-implementing them from scratch. If this were Pg, you could just use plperl and use the module that did what you wanted :-)

Cheers - L~R

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