Random geographic coordinates (on land, avoid ocean)

Question

Any clever ideas on how to generate random coordinates (latitude / longitude) of places on Earth? Latitude / Longitude. Precision to 5 points and avoid bodies of water. <

Answer 1

To get a nice even distribution over latitudes and longitudes you should do something like this to get the right angles:

double longitude = Math.random() * Math.PI * 2;
double latitude = Math.acos(Math.random() * 2 - 1);

As for avoiding bodies of water, do you have the data for where water is already? Well, just resample until you get a hit! If you don't have this data already then it seems some other people have some better suggestions than I would for that...

Hope this helps, cheers.