[ODE] Remote forces using ODE optimization

[Kevin Frugier]

Hello there,

I'm working for a french laboratory, ALAB (Artificial Life and 
Behaviour) that has already made one project using ODE : SPEAR 
(http://www.ode.org/users.html).
Now we are working on 3DSPI : A 3D Simulation of Protein's Interactions.
You'll find a little page on what I've done on this project at this page 
: http://illament.free.fr/tmp/ (including videos).

Now I'am having an optimization problem.
At the beginning our proteins where moving in the world randomely. If 2 
proteins were colliding they "could" stay together.
But now I want to use remote forces to modelize attraction or repulsion.
I started using ODE's nearcallback but it is made for collision 
detection. The doc said : potentially intersecting objects..
So I programmed my own function wich takes every protein and calculate 
the forces with all the other proteins. (n*(n-1)/2 complexity)
It works well, I mean we see exactly what we could imagine, but we 
really have to reduce the number of proteins because it is to slow.

So here comes my question : is there any way to use ODE's nearcallback 
or anyother function for my problem ?
For example is it possible to set a grid with a given size and ODE will 
give me the pair of proteins as before to allow me to optimize my remote 
forces calcul.

Thanks a lot.

Kevin Frugier