Banding in Doom 3

Archived from groups: alt.games.doom (More info?)

Tiny Tim wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I thought that banding was a thing of the past with 32-bit color.
>
> I'm in the caverns now and there is a lot of banding whenever fog is
> present.
>
> I,m running a 6800 GT. Is there anything you can do to better the visuals
> when there is fog?
>
> Otherwise the game is just incredible, playing at 1600x1200 with 2xAA and
> 8xAF.
>
> Regards
>
>

Is it mild banding? This is a side effect of the non-volumetric fog that
Doom 3 and previous Q3 games used (it looks volumetric, but it's
actually a surface effect). It was common before, and I noticed it
playing D3 for the first time.

Also, smoke effects seemed to band a little bit too. I wonder if fog
and sprite based effects are processed per pixel like the other
lighting; not using a FP precision might result in banding.