geodetic

Complex geometry types and operators are obviously supported, and the implementation is fully geodetic and very high precision by default.

The thing is, geodetic systems, WGS84 and others, are an approximation, that is mostly invisible since maps are also in WGS84.

Currently, MBCompass can show both magnetic north using Android’s sensor fusion and true north (based on WGS84 geodetic coordinates).

WGS84 is not a map projection, it's a geodetic reference frame prescribing a reference ellipsoid and reference positions of ground stations.

It wasn't that long ago that proper geodetic models were not supported at all.

GPS coordinates are geodetic, tied to the WGS-84 ellipsoid and Earth’s rotating reference frame.

There is a very important convention hidden in this method: it relies on the GPS (WGS84) geodetic system in order to encode names.

And last I knew the current PostGIS does not do pure geodetic for all operations (or so I've heard from the guys who wrote the geodetic geometry engine for my company).

From the actual article: > No geodetic station is involved in this study, as one of the smartwatches serves as the base station.

For Japan there's a special case where they now have 18 geodetic zones.

The problem only appears when you try to convert between geodetic systems.

Mind you, we still had to deal with different geodetic data depending on the chart supplier.

"True" altitude requires you to both have an excellent fix on the satellites and have a very, very good reference geodetic model (which you probably don't).