Without GPS
Although the concept of waypoints has been greatly popularized among non-specialists by the development of the GPS, waypoints can be used with other navigational aids. A notable example is the worldwide use, in orienteering sports, of waypoints with a map that omits a coordinate system (see Control point (orienteering)).
In aerial celestial navigation, waypoints are precomputed along an aircraft's great circle route to divide the flight into rhumb lines and allow celestial fixes to be more rapidly taken using the pre-computed intercept method.
In air navigation, waypoints are sometimes defined as intersections between two VOR radials, or in terms of specific distances and headings towards or away from a radio beacon. For visual air navigation (see the article on visual flight rules), waypoints may be directly associated with distinctive features on the ground that are easily identifiable from aircraft, such as stadiums, power plants, racetracks, etc. Temporary waypoints are sometimes defined as traffic requires, e.g., air-traffic controllers may instruct a pilot to reference a terrain feature at “your ten o'clock position, two miles.”
Read more about this topic: Waypoint