Is it possible to generate the coordinates of evenly spaced point on a sphere or ellipsoid in MATLAB 7.7 (R2008b)?

I would like to generate a set of points that are distributed evenly over the surface of a sphere or ellipse. The intersection of latitude and longitude lines on a globe does not satisfy this criteria because the density of points is higher at the poles than at the equator.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The ability to do generate a set of points evenly distributed over a sphere or ellipsoid is not directly available in MATLAB 7.7 (R2008b).

To work around this issue, you can try implementing in MATLAB one of the methods described in one of the following URLs:

Algorithms for evenly distributing an arbitrary number of points on a sphere:

https://paulbourke.net/geometry/circlesphere/

Method for determining 8 equidistant points on a sphere:

http://www.treenshop.com/Treenshop/ArticlesPages/LayingOutPoints_Article/Laying%20Out%20Points%20On%20A%20Sphere.htm

[Adam Danz]

Also noteworthy:

Deserno, M. (2004). How to generate equidistributed points on the surface of a sphere. If Polymerforshung (Ed.), 99.

(pdf) https://www.cmu.edu/biolphys/deserno/pdf/sphere_equi.pdf

[Bruno Luong]

Much more complete collections of methods

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/37004-suite-of-functions-to-perform-uniform-sampling-of-a-sphere?s_tid=srchtitle