Get compass orientation of wgs84 coordinates or polygon

Question

I got a set of wgs84 coordinates to place a polygon on Google Maps. I am wondering if i can use the same coordinates to get a compass direction of the coordinates. I don't need a solution specific for Google Maps, javascript or php. I am just wondering what the right approche would be.

Something like this would be the end result. I understand it needs some sort of algorithm in the background

I found Geolib and the 'getCompassDirection' function but this function only allows 2 points to create a line and get the bearing(angle) of that line.

Answer 1

You can't get any direction information out of a single position coordinate.

Position coordinates don't represent any knowledge about the orientation of an object. Therefore you need something that has direction (ie a vector between two coordinates) to calculate compass direction. That's exactly why the function you mentioned asks for two points.

This means you can get a compass direction for any edge of a polygon (by using its two end points), but not for its vertices.

Hope this helps!