Calculate the arc distance between 2 points on a sphere

Question

Hello Everyone, I have an issue here, its related to math but some hints are appretiated. The player has to position 3d models on a sphere which is the globe. For example a building.. and after plotting I have to display the distance between his poltted position and the accurate position. I am getting the player chosen point by a raycast, so on mouse down the model will be plotted and I save have the hit point and the other point is defined by me. I have positioned small sphere's at the accurate position, so the position of these sphere's have to be compared to the hit point(position) to get the distance(arc distance) I think to get the arc distance I need a third point which is the center of the sphere(globe) and hence I can get the radus, since the hit point and the original position is the on surface of the globe. I really appretiate any help!

Answer 1

Answer by Owen-Reynolds · Jun 22, 2012 at 02:14 PM

Using the center point sounds right. Run a "spoke" from the center to one point; find the angle to the other; you know 360 degrees is a distance of 2xPIxR; find the percent. Untested:

 Vector3 spokeToActual = playerPos-sphereCenter,
         spokeToCorrect = correctPos-sphereCenter;
 float angleFromCenter = Vector3.Angle(spokeToActual, spokeToCorrect);
 // NOTE: angle inputs don't need normalize. In degrees(!!)
 
 float D = 2*Mathf.PI*radius * (angleFromCenter/360);

As a check, print that along with playerPos-correctPos).magnitude. It should only be a little bit bigger, if the player is remotely close.

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moghes · Jun 22, 2012 at 04:36 PM 0

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Answer 2

Answer by MV10 · Jan 02, 2016 at 06:44 AM

Wolfram-Alpha defines great-circle spherical distance as the arcosine of the dot product of the two coordinates:


   float SphericalDistance(Vector3 position1, Vector3 position2)
    {
        return Mathf.Acos(Vector3.Dot(position1, position2));
    }

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jasbro · Jul 17, 2016 at 05:13 AM 0

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Bunny83 jasbro · Jul 17, 2016 at 01:45 PM 0

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Answer 3

Answer by zaghaghi · Jun 22, 2012 at 02:57 PM

Hi, I think that you need to compute great circle distance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance

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RyanShackelford · May 04, 2018 at 10:45 PM 0

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Calculate the arc distance between 2 points on a sphere

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