Splitting spatial query out?

[waywardmonkeys]

trafficstars

I am working on something with bevy that is not a game. We have no real need for physics, but we do need spatial query. Would there be interest and would it make sense to possibly split this crate up some?

[Jondolf]

You should already be able to use SpatialQueryPlugin on its own without any of the actual physics plugins (broad phase, narrow phase, integrator, solver etc.), but I agree that it'd be nice to move spatial queries into a separate crate that could be used without bevy_xpbd. The current spatial query logic depends on colliders though, so we'd need to move collision detection into a separate crate as well, or have collision detection + spatial queries in the same crate.

For now, I probably won't be committing resources to doing this for the current Parry-based spatial queries. However, I'm planning on trying to make a custom Glam-based collision detection library that could be used instead of Parry, which would get rid of the Nalgebra types while also allowing us to make things even more Bevy-native, maybe even using Bevy's primitive shapes for some collider shapes if we implemented the primitive shapes RFC. It would probably be a general purpose collision detection + spatial query crate, but with a bevy feature that would provide things like the NarrowPhasePlugin, SpatialQueryPlugin, RayCaster component and other Bevy-specific features and ergonomics.

[waywardmonkeys]

This all sounds good. I may be able to help at some point in the future once things are ready for a split.