I am working with an application that dumps the latitude/longtitude coordinates into my database. My goal is to apply a grid layout to the earth (using Google Maps), group the coordinates together and update the correct grid cell. However, I am stuck with regards to how to create the grid overlay.
All the formulas I have found (for example here or the Google Maps computeOffset) take the earths shape into consideration. When using these formulas to calculate the coordinates for the grid cells, the lines naturally becomes skewed as the distance increases. My question is therefore, is there a formula for calculating latitude/longtitude that ignores the shape of the earth (where the input is a set of coordinates, bearing and length in meters)? I.e., what I want to achieve is:
If I have a point (0,0) and I want to find the position that is 100m to the east, I want the formula to return (latitude_offset_100m,0). Using a formula which considers the circular shape of the earth, this might give for example (latitude_offset_100m,longtitude_offset_5m).
I finally figured out how to achieve what I wanted. By using rhumb lines, you can get “straight” lines on a Mercator projected map (like Google maps).