Improving banding
Banding is a problem affecting various steps in the rendering of a frame. It affects Volumetric Fog and lighting calculations, for example.
Figure 11.5 – Banding problem detail in Volumetric Fog
We can see in Figure 11.5 how this can be present in Volumetric Fog if no solution is implemented. A solution to remove banding in visuals is to add some dithering to various passes of the frame, but that also adds visual noise to the image.
Dithering is defined as the intentional addition of noise specifically to remove banding. Different type of noises can be used, as we will see in the accompaining code. Adding temporal reprojection smoothens the noise added, thus becoming one of the best ways to improve the visual quality of the image.
In Chapter 10, Adding Volumetric Fog, we saw a very simple temporal reprojection scheme, and we have also added noise to various steps of the algorithm. We have now seen a more complex implementation...