title: Converting GPS coordinates to X, Y, Z coordinates
body: <p>So here is the basic problem. I am currently working on a GPS system in C# in Unity 3D (the person that has given us the assignment is making us use this program, so I can't do it in anything else).</p>
  
  <p>Now I've run in to a small problem, basically we are able to request (what we think are decimal) coordinates from an android phone, but now we are trying to convert those coordinates to X, Y, Z coordinates. Preferebly X and Z, because we do not actually need height. However everything we have been finding on the internet so far has been for a conversion to a sphere map where as we just have a basic flat digital map.</p>
  
  <p>If anyone knows how to convert the coordinates we have to the basic X and Z coordinates (so our longitude and latitude) it'd be amazing.</p>
  
  <p>To quickly note I am not sure if the sort of coordinates we have are actual decimal coordinates so this is what they look like:</p>
  
  <p>Latitude: 53.228888 Longitude: 6.5403559</p>
  
  <p>these coordinates should end up on "Wegalaan 3, Groningen, The Netherlands" if you would look them up on a map.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks already!</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: (this is also in the comments)</p>
  
  <p>Sorry if it might be confusing. Honestly I only half understand how all this works, anyways to clear some things up. I am currently working in Unity with a simple 2D map I got from the internet of the city I live in (Groningen, The Netherlands) and I am trying to basically take GPS coordinates I get from my android phone and then show them on that map with a red dot, however to do this I need to be able to move the red dot to the right coordinates on the map. What I am trying to do is convert the GPS coords (lon and lat) to X and Z (Unity3D flat coordinates, may also just be X and Y) so that if I align the map right I get a small GPS system for just my city. If you are curious as to why I am doing this it is simply because a friend of mine and me are trying to build a game using our city and this GPS system as a basis</p>
  
  <p>EDIT2:</p>
  
  <p>except that I'll be honest I have no idea how cartesian coordinates work, but they seem to be what I am looking for yes :P Coordinates on a flat plane and with X,Y coords I mean basically just coordinates I could use in Unity3D on a flat 2D plane which is what I am working in.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT3:</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for the answers, to start. This is not a duplicate, secondly my friend and I already found the stackoverflow topic you sent me, but it seems to not be working for us (maybe we did something wrong). Basically the north and south distance between different places we tested with that formula have worked, however the east west distance between them was way bigger than it should have been. We think it might be because that formula was meant for a spherical earth, but maybe we did something wrong. If someone could explain further that'd be amazing!</p>
  
  <p>EDIT4: </p>
  
  <p>We are sure it can't be our map that is wrong in any way, because we have aligned it with multiple locations. We got the coordinates for these locations and then used this website: <a href="http://www.gpscoordinaten.nl/converteer-rd-coordinaten.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.gpscoordinaten.nl/converteer-rd-coordinaten.php</a> to convert it to XY coordinates and then used these XY coordinates to check if our map would align properly. It did, so we are sure there is some problem with the maths we are using and not with our actual map.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT5: Removed many, many grammatical errors. It's way too hot over here to be writing properly right now, so I am very very sorry if any of this makes no sense. just let me know and I'll edit to try and explain what we are trying to do.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT6: Found my own asnwer, it is down in between all the other answers if you wanna see what I did to fix my problem</p>