A magnetic compass apparatus and method to account for magnetic distortion while determining a magnetic heading is disclosed. The method enables a compass module, comprising at least two magnetometers, to characterize its magnetic environment dynamically, while collecting data of a geomagnetic field; a user moves an apparatus through various orientations; the environment may or may not contain magnetic distortion influences. Data gathered by magnetometers and, optionally, accelerometers are processed through at least two filters before being transferred as a processed data set for repetitive measurement calculations. A series of calculations is executed recursively in time by solving one or more linear vector equations using processed data.