我猜你想让它沿着地球的曲率运动。你的两点和地心在一个平面上。地球的中心是这个平面上的圆心，这两个点(大致)在这个圆的周长上。由此你可以通过求一点到另一点的角度来计算距离。

如果点的高度不一样，或者如果你需要考虑地球不是一个完美的球体，这就有点困难了。

你可以在f#的fssnip中找到这个实现(有一些很好的解释)

以下是重要的部分:

let GreatCircleDistance<[&ltMeasure>] 'u> (R : float<'u>) (p1 : Location) (p2 : Location) =
    let degToRad (x : float&ltdeg>) = System.Math.PI * x / 180.0&ltdeg/rad>

    let sq x = x * x
    // take the sin of the half and square the result
    let sinSqHf (a : float&ltrad>) = (System.Math.Sin >> sq) (a / 2.0&ltrad>)
    let cos (a : float&ltdeg>) = System.Math.Cos (degToRad a / 1.0&ltrad>)

    let dLat = (p2.Latitude - p1.Latitude) |> degToRad
    let dLon = (p2.Longitude - p1.Longitude) |> degToRad

    let a = sinSqHf dLat + cos p1.Latitude * cos p2.Latitude * sinSqHf dLon
    let c = 2.0 * System.Math.Atan2(System.Math.Sqrt(a), System.Math.Sqrt(1.0-a))

    R * c

这段Lua代码改编自维基百科和Robert Lipe的GPSbabel工具:

local EARTH_RAD = 6378137.0 
  -- earth's radius in meters (official geoid datum, not 20,000km / pi)

local radmiles = EARTH_RAD*100.0/2.54/12.0/5280.0;
  -- earth's radius in miles

local multipliers = {
  radians = 1, miles = radmiles, mi = radmiles, feet = radmiles * 5280,
  meters = EARTH_RAD, m = EARTH_RAD, km = EARTH_RAD / 1000, 
  degrees = 360 / (2 * math.pi), min = 60 * 360 / (2 * math.pi)
}

function gcdist(pt1, pt2, units) -- return distance in radians or given units
  --- this formula works best for points close together or antipodal
  --- rounding error strikes when distance is one-quarter Earth's circumference
  --- (ref: wikipedia Great-circle distance)
  if not pt1.radians then pt1 = rad(pt1) end
  if not pt2.radians then pt2 = rad(pt2) end
  local sdlat = sin((pt1.lat - pt2.lat) / 2.0);
  local sdlon = sin((pt1.lon - pt2.lon) / 2.0);
  local res = sqrt(sdlat * sdlat + cos(pt1.lat) * cos(pt2.lat) * sdlon * sdlon);
  res = res > 1 and 1 or res < -1 and -1 or res
  res = 2 * asin(res);
  if units then return res * assert(multipliers[units])
  else return res
  end
end

在我的项目中，我需要计算很多点之间的距离，所以我继续尝试优化我在这里找到的代码。平均而言，在不同的浏览器中，我的新实现的运行速度比获得最多好评的答案快2倍。

function distance(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2) {
  var p = 0.017453292519943295;    // Math.PI / 180
  var c = Math.cos;
  var a = 0.5 - c((lat2 - lat1) * p)/2 + 
          c(lat1 * p) * c(lat2 * p) * 
          (1 - c((lon2 - lon1) * p))/2;

  return 12742 * Math.asin(Math.sqrt(a)); // 2 * R; R = 6371 km
}

您可以在这里使用我的jsPerf并查看结果。

最近我需要在python中做同样的事情，所以这里是一个python实现:

from math import cos, asin, sqrt
def distance(lat1, lon1, lat2, lon2):
    p = 0.017453292519943295
    a = 0.5 - cos((lat2 - lat1) * p)/2 + cos(lat1 * p) * cos(lat2 * p) * (1 - cos((lon2 - lon1) * p)) / 2
    return 12742 * asin(sqrt(a))

为了完整起见:维基上的Haversine。

下面是我在Python中使用的Haversine函数:

from math import pi,sqrt,sin,cos,atan2

def haversine(pos1, pos2):
    lat1 = float(pos1['lat'])
    long1 = float(pos1['long'])
    lat2 = float(pos2['lat'])
    long2 = float(pos2['long'])

    degree_to_rad = float(pi / 180.0)

    d_lat = (lat2 - lat1) * degree_to_rad
    d_long = (long2 - long1) * degree_to_rad

    a = pow(sin(d_lat / 2), 2) + cos(lat1 * degree_to_rad) * cos(lat2 * degree_to_rad) * pow(sin(d_long / 2), 2)
    c = 2 * atan2(sqrt(a), sqrt(1 - a))
    km = 6367 * c
    mi = 3956 * c

    return {"km":km, "miles":mi}

如果你需要更准确的数据，可以看看这个。

Vincenty's formulae are two related iterative methods used in geodesy to calculate the distance between two points on the surface of a spheroid, developed by Thaddeus Vincenty (1975a) They are based on the assumption that the figure of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and hence are more accurate than methods such as great-circle distance which assume a spherical Earth. The first (direct) method computes the location of a point which is a given distance and azimuth (direction) from another point. The second (inverse) method computes the geographical distance and azimuth between two given points. They have been widely used in geodesy because they are accurate to within 0.5 mm (0.020″) on the Earth ellipsoid.