Simulating weapon ballistic without physics or tracers.

Most games tend to use thoe following methods for weapons:

Slow moving projectiles (rockets, grenades) -> Physics based.
Fast/Instant projectiles (bullets) -> Tracer based.

I am looking for something inbetween, to get simplistic ballistic for bullet weapons, basically i would like to respect the muzzle velocity , and eventually the drop too.

The bullet wouldn't touch instantly but would be based on distance, however i still think it's going to move too fast for the physics engine, so i'm thinking i could just simulate balistics through math. This would allow me to adjust the trace elevation.

Now i don't knpow how i could make it "delayed" ...

Would there be a way to simulate it properlywithout running a test frame by frame?