What does Real-time Global Illumination do in Unity?

• A. Real-time GI updates lighting continuously, reflecting scene changes.
• B. Real-time GI bakes lighting into textures.
• C. Real-time GI only affects ambient color.
• D. Real-time GI is deprecated.

Answer: (A)

Real-time Global Illumination creates and updates the indirect lighting as the scene changes. It accounts for light bouncing between surfaces and recalculates how that bounced light affects every surface during runtime, so moving lights or objects immediately alter the softened, indirect illumination in the scene. This dynamic behavior is what distinguishes it from baked GI, which precomputes lighting into textures and doesn’t update as the scene runs. It also goes beyond ambient color, since indirect light from nearby surfaces can affect the color and brightness of many objects, not just the ambient term. While Unity’s GI tools have evolved and there are performance-conscious workflows, Real-time GI itself is not simply deprecated and remains the mechanism for dynamic scenes.