Title says it all. I need to pre-calculate the physics for a flightpath (projectile motion) with several forces acting on the object. (drag, lift from spin, angular drag, wind) I need to calculate these very fast as they will be used for a golf game aiming system on the easier difficulty. Also need to pre-render a sphere rolling on a terrain mesh. Looking into switching timescale but it will probably require tons of script changes. Any solutions would be appreciated! If nothing else I can always write my own physics code..
There is no way to run the built-in physics simulation independent of rendering and running the scene. However, in your case, I could imagine that you could do a sufficiently accurate simulation of the physics you need by calculating them yourself in a script, and using raycasts to detect collisions (Or possibly use the same script for game physics as well, to guarantee consistency of results).
What keeps you from running he ingame physics on the ball as a simulation, collecting the results and using those to show the probabel arc. If the game time scale gives you problem you could scale the ball and other physics down.
A golf ball is in flight what 10 seconds, so a factor 10 would give you a theoretical update rate of 1 sec, getting the suggested flightpath a second after a parameter change might not be unreasonable.