Feature request: implement collision force to prevent overlap

[jorrit-hdrn]

Hi there,

First thank you for this great lib, the performance is outstanding!

I was wondering implementing the collision force of D3-force is considered?

I would like to use cosmos as a layout calculator with a different renderer, and for that I need a "prevent overlap" setting, which this force could provide.

I would like to contribute although i'm not well versed in glsl. Would you say implementing this is feasible?

[rokotyan]

Hi @jorrit-hdrn,

It's not something we're currently working on, and it'll be difficult to implement on GPU without a significant performance loss. So, maybe one day but not in the nearest future 😔

[jorrit-hdrn]

Thank you for your message, that is too bad to hear!

Could you shed some light on why it would lead to a significant performance loss? No worries if you're too busy.

[rokotyan]

@jorrit-hdrn Collision detection will require a lot of uncoalesced memory access operations (in finding the points that are overlapping in each simulation frame) which are very slow on GPUs. I guess there could be some tricks, but they are not obvious and the implementation won't be easy.