Ideas on Merging Collision Contacts

there are times when it would be useful to postpone the contact creation. tipically if you want do some post processing/contact merging

how do you see this fitting in OgreODE? I'd imagine somthing like this:

1. Geometry::collide should not call dJointCreateContact. OgreODE could simply fill a list of 'gathered potential contacts'[/*:m]
   
2. The calling client would then process this list removing unwanted contacts or changing them (normal, depth etc)[/*:m]
   
3. Finally the client would submit the modified list to OgreODE for dJointCreateContact[/*:m][/list:u]
   
   I can't see a way of doing it without changing OgreODE internally and i would like to hear something from the bosses
   
   here a thread on the ode mailing list where i got the advice on merging contacts (which would solve my real problem):
   http://q12.org/pipermail/ode/2006-May/018670.html
   http://q12.org/pipermail/ode/2006-May/018674.html
   http://q12.org/pipermail/ode/2006-May/018677.html

Seems a bit specialized to go inside OgreOde Core...

But I added a way to do that in OgreODE CVS :

Use Collision Listener to register contact in a list client-side. Your listener add contact in a list each time called and return false to prevent ogreode creating contacts.

Then in OgreOde with a client_side registered stepListener where middleStep is overriden, do the contact merging on your list and do the djointattach work here.

Then tells us about results and provide a simples_scenes trimehs demo patch

that's exactly what i was searching for thanks tuan
i'll post results as soon as i have something

fyi: i'll have to create a new class
class _OgreOdeExport ContactJoint:public Joint

in order to wrap the dJointCreateContact.

Seems great. Btw, I think it also can be a way for user to use OgreOde only as a Collision library, and handle its physic itself...