So, what have I been up to this morning… Well, I had an answer back on a problem I had been having with some software. It comes down to definitions. What does ‘Relative Northing’ and ‘Relative Easting’ mean?

Well, the first way is that these are relative to your position and to your heading. If something has a relative northing of 1000m, and you are facing north then the object is 1000m to the north. To complicate things, if you look east, and there is a relative northing of 1000m, because it is a ‘Relative Northing’, then the object would be 1000m east of me. This is because of the assumption that the ‘RELATIVE NORTHING’ is relative to what direction you are pointing.

This is not what the people who are supplying the data thought. Their view is that the ‘Relative Northing’ would always be north regardless of which was I was looking. This is a totally reasonable point of view. It makes sense. It is just not how I thought things would work. Looking back though this is the logical way for things to happen. I guess I would have tried to come up with a better name than ‘Relative Northing’ and ‘Relative Easting’, maybe something like ‘Northing Offset’ and ‘Easting Offset’.