TITLE: How do I convert the distance between two lat/long points into feet/meters?
QUESTION [15 upvotes]: I've been reading around the net and everything I find is really confusing. I just need a formula that will get me 95% there. I have a tool that outputs the distance between two lat/long points.
Point 1: 32.773178, -79.920094
Point 2: 32.781666666666666, -79.916666666666671
Distance: 0.0091526545913161624

I would like a fairly simple formula for converting the distance to feet and meters.
Thanks!

REPLY [4 votes]: Since the question is tagged Mathematica it might be good to provide the Mathematica function, which is (as of version 7):
GeoDistance[{32.773178, -79.920094}, 
            {32.781666666666666,-79.916666666666671}
]

==> 994.652

or, if you want to specify the reference ellipsoid:
GeoDistance[
   GeoPosition[{32.773178, -79.920094, 0}, "ITRF00"], 
   GeoPosition[{32.781666666666666, -79.916666666666671 , 0}, "ITRF00"]
]