Simulating a rocket launch

Ok, I don’t need a physically accurate simulation by any means, I just want to visually approximate what’s going on in this video. - YouTube

Basically I need the rocket to start from a speed of zero, slowly leave the launch pad and accelerate only in the Y direction.

So I think, on Update() I need to increase the rate by velocity and something needs to increase the velocity. Can someone help me wrap my head around this?

Quickest way to see some results and start playing with it is put a “constant force” component on the object. This requires no scripting. If you need to have it start “off” and then turn it on, you can do that in script, but at that point you may as well just script the whole thing.

To script it using built-in systems:

  • Add a rigidbody component to the rocket in the editor.
  • In FixedUpdate(), use rigidbody.AddForce(force * Time.deltaTime, ForceMode.Acceleration). Always do physics force manipulations in FixedUpdate().

Google “unity rigidbody”, “unity addforce”, and “unity deltatime” to get usage details from the unity manual. (The search function at unity3d.com is slow.)