Hi all,
My plan is to implement a crane model in Unity and estimate the force at the end of the hook (gravity + inertia + wind effect + etc). The question is how reliable this value is? Does anyone have experience of validating how accurate the Unity physic engine is?
Good enough for a computer game, not good enough for real world engineering. And assuming this is a 3D physics problem, then the physics is solved in Nvidia PhysX, which is not within the control of Unity.
Consider that PhysX is a rigid body solver, it has no capability for wind effects, thermal effects or structural performance, you would have to code that yourself.