The recent discussion of colors, etc. reminded me of a problem I have come
up against in height mapping PICT files to 3D meshes.

When Rowbyting and Base Addressing a GWorld you get per channel component:

8 Bit  World RGBs ranging from 0-7

16 Bit World RGBs ranging from 0-31

32 Bit World RGBs ranging from 0-255

When height mapping generally you use the luminosity components, so you
average the 3 RGB's, and plot the height as a FN of that number, which at
Gray scale or RGB + Averaging will give you 0-255 steps.

256 Steps is a staircase on a curved surface.

I thought, hey, I can use 0-65535 to get more steps, but those numbers just
map to a range which maps to 0-255 also. That is, 65500 is the same as
65535.

Bryce and other programs maintain a lot more resolution internally, from
either thousands of colors, or 48 bits as some claim.

My question , after this long exposition,  is how can I generate more color
or luminosity steps when height mapping, as 256 isn't nearly enough for a
smooth mesh?

Thanks for any theoretical or other practical suggestions.

Robert Covington