As the rendering with 16-bit palettes has been finished and commited to the CVS, it is now possible to compare visual results given by this new approach and the traditional one (with the use of 8-bit 256-color palettes). This picture demonstrates a velocity section rendered with a 16-bit 4096-color palette, and this one illustrates the same section with the same palette in lower 8-bit 256-color resolution. As you can see, the 16-bit rendering gives more accurate, detailed and smooth picture. It also might significantly improve rendering of Z-slices and particular seismic attributes. On the other hand, regular vertical seismic sections rendered in 16-bit palettes are not visually distinguishable from 8-bit samples. It turns out that for regular seismic data, using of 16-bit palettes does not make much sense. The only case when it can be used is lighting. When 16-bit palettes are used, all textures are stored in a 16-bit format. This means that normals (need for calculation of light) are also stored in 16-bit values instead of 8-bit ones. Which brings more accure calculation of normals and, as a result, more smooth lighting visualization.

Video memory consumption should be mentioned in this context, of course, since the rendering visualization improvement bring some overhead. Below are the memory requirements depending on the visualization mode (compared to the default 8-bit paletted rendering without lighting):

• 16-bit palettes no lighting - 2x
• 8-bit palettes + lighting - 4x
• 16-bit palettes + lighting - 8x