tern.rbmi
Reference-based multiple imputation tables, shipping only what CRAN checks demand.
Comparison · Analytics
dggridR vs geodist
A side-by-side editorial comparison of dggridR and geodist — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:geospatial
dggridR vs geodist: at a glance
What is dggridR?
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
What is geodist?
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
geodist computes geodesic distances between coordinate pairs in C with no dependencies, offering several measures that trade accuracy for speed — including a 'cheap' approximation used by default. The API is small and largely finished; 0.1.0 added geodist_min() for nearest-match lookups and 0.1.1 is a compiler warning fix.
dggridR vs geodist: editorial side-by-side
dggridR
0.0ANALYTICS
A discrete global grid generator grew cell traversal and became a usable spatial index.
◆ Current state
dggridR builds discrete global grids — icosahedral tessellations of the Earth into equal-area hexagonal or triangular cells — by wrapping the DGGRID C++ engine. The 4.1.0 release adds dgneighbors, dgchildren and dgparent for moving between adjacent cells and across resolutions, plus dgpoints_to_cells and dgbin_points for mapping and aggregating point data into cells. New aperture 7 and mixed-aperture ISEA43H grid types arrive alongside them.
◆ Where it's heading
The package changed hands in effect as well as in code: the 4.0.0 engine update to DGGRID v9.0b and the first real test suite were contributed by Sebastian Krantz, who also maintains the upstream engine fork, and 4.1.0's feature burst followed two weeks later. The direction of that burst is unmistakable — away from generating grids for plotting and toward using them as an indexing structure that point data gets binned into and navigated through.
◆ Prediction
Expect the cell hierarchy functions to extend to non-hexagonal apertures and multi-level traversal, closing the remaining gaps against established global indexing systems.
geodist
0.0ANALYTICS
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
◆ Current state
geodist computes geodesic distances between coordinate pairs in C with no dependencies, offering several measures that trade accuracy for speed — including a 'cheap' approximation used by default. The API is small and largely finished; 0.1.0 added geodist_min() for nearest-match lookups and 0.1.1 is a compiler warning fix.
◆ Where it's heading
Development has been about making the speed-accuracy trade visible rather than hiding it. The 0.0.6 release added messages telling users to pick a different measure once the default cheap approximation is applied beyond 100km, where its error stops being negligible. Around that, the work is input handling — tibble support, better lon/lat column matching, vector inputs — and hardening the C code. It is a package that treats being small and correct as the feature.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued low-frequency maintenance: compiler warnings and geodesic source updates account for three of the last six releases, and the function surface has grown by only two entries in five years.
Alternatives to dggridR and geodist
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either dggridR or geodist.
tern.mmrm
An MMRM tabulation package that has published nothing since its 2024 CRAN releases.
ggmagnify
A single-purpose ggplot2 inset tool, refining the same three arguments.
symengine
An R symbolic-maths binding whose changelog is really the C++ core's release notes.
gtfstools
gtfstools stopped guarding its own object model and started accepting everyone else's.
quantities
The glue package that makes R carry units and uncertainty through the same calculation.
See all dggridR alternatives → · See all geodist alternatives →
Recent activity from dggridR and geodist
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agodggridRCell neighbors, parents and children make the grid navigable ⚡
- 3mo agodggridRBundled DGGRID engine updated to v9.0b with a test suite
- 3mo agodggridRMaster merged into development ahead of the 4.0 work
- 1y agogeodistgeodist 0.1.1 clears a clang warning in geodesic.c
- 2y agogeodistgeodist 0.1.0 adds geodist_min() for nearest matches
- 3y agogeodistgeodist 0.0.8 updates geodesic source, fixes clang warnings
- 5y agogeodistgeodist 0.0.7 improves lon/lat column matching and tibbles
- 5y agogeodistgeodist 0.0.6 warns when cheap distances exceed 100km
- 6y agogeodistgeodist 0.0.4 adds geodist_vec() for vector inputs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between dggridR and geodist?
Both compete on the same themes — geospatial — within Analytics. dggridR and geodist are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is dggridR better than geodist?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. dggridR and geodist are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to dggridR?
Top dggridR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dggridR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dggridr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to geodist?
Top geodist alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "geodist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/geodist-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.