[article author here] The issues you're seeing here comes down to quantization errors in the depth maps. The effective range of a depth map for most human-scale

[article author here] The issues you're seeing here comes down to quantization errors in the depth maps. The effective range of a depth map for most human-scale scenes is about 20m; what you then have is 8 bits (i.e. 256 levels) to try to encode everything from right up close to the camera out to 20m. Even if there's in interpretation function on top of this to distribute the depth more meaningfully (e.g. storing 1/depth to prioritise detail on closer objects) you still, in the end, have banding. When we developed this approach we validated it against existing techniques and I'd still like to think we have the smoothest, least prone-to-banding technique for simulated defocus out there; the maths was tweaked to specifically address this. Of course, there are limits - aliasing can only be mitigated so much. But that's why we're still working on it and this kind of feedback is enormously useful (thank-you!) in helping us move closer to a virtual camera that feels more like a real one!