There is often tremendous confusion between bearing, track and similar terms.
On Wikipedia, I saw the following sentence:
NOTE CAREFULLY, THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE IS WRONG...
In aerial navigation, bearing refers to the actual compass direction of the forward course of the aircraft.
...NOTE CAREFULLY, THAT SENTENCE IS WRONG.
PLEASE NOTE I believe that quote is totally incorrect, do not quote this page!
I refer to the "where the aircraft is going/pointing" as either "track" (the vector of motion over the ground) or "heading" (where the nose is pointing). Whereas, "bearing" means bearing regarding some distant object, (that could be either relative or absolute), and does not relate in any way to "where the aircraft is going/pointing".
{Indeed, you could just be standing somewhere - not moving and not in a vehicle - and very much talk about "bearings" to various landmarks.}
In other words, I have always thought this diagram is correct, and the only usage.
My question for actual pilots, controllers, etc, is this! ...
In fact, am I correct that the quoted sentence above is totally wrong?
Further: am I being "too dogmatic"? Hence specifically: is it the case that, in aviation, perhaps you sometimes do use "bearing" loosely to mean track or heading?
Let me repeat myself: I'm pretty sure I understand what bearing means and what track means. But the wiki quote in question, says the opposite: in fact, is it just plain utterly 100% incorrect, a typo? Or, am I naive... ie, you dudes sometimes do use "bearing" to mean what I call track?
{Just TBTC ... for me "bearing" cannot be used about "us". The sentence "our bearing.." is meaningless. You use bearing about another object. "What's the bearing to blah..." [Of course, that could be implicit, ie, "is our bearing still 123?" meaning, I'm still talking about bearing to Sydney as in the previous sentence...].}
As a curiosity: physics programmers (for games, whatever) constantly use these terms, and of course, we have to use them really precisely like any programming. You can imagine a character or whatever (perhaps a car in GTA!) has all these qualities, they are discussed constantly in relation to physics of the virtual objects in all senses, AI paths of tanks, etc etc. Next time I scream at someone "that's not bearing you idiot, that's track" I want to be on a sound footing!