How to detect if player is falling without rigidbody?

Questions & Answers
1

I’m trying to detect if my player is falling by tracking if his Y position is decreasing, however it doesn’t seem to be working. I’m keeping track of his latest Y position in LateUpdate but it doesn’t make a difference; is there a better way to tell if his Y position is decreasing or better yet get the decrease rate?

    void Update()
    {
        if(!player.GetComponent<GroundedCharacterController>().isGrounded){
            if(cineTransposer.m_FollowOffset != fallingOffset && player.transform.position.y < lastYPos){
                StartCoroutine(LerpToFallingOffset());
            }
        }else{
            if(cineTransposer.m_FollowOffset != standingOffset){
                StartCoroutine(LerpToStandingOffset());
            }            
        }
    }

    void LateUpdate(){
        lastYPos = player.transform.position.y;
        Debug.Log("last y pos is " + lastYPos);
    }
2

You can calculate the dropping speed inside Update. Just calculate the difference in in position divided by the difference in time between the frames (Update is run once per frame) and you get speed.

Pseudocode:

speed = (player.transform.position.y - lastPosition) / Time.deltaTime;

lastPosition = player.transform.position.y; //store the position for the next frame calculation;

PS, you cannot get any difference in position between Update and LateUpdate (unless you specially move in object in both… however this would not make any sense because this extra movement wouldn’t be rendered anyway)