I wrote a Raytracer for DOS, 16 VGA colors

Bisqwit's discussion of dithering is outstanding . He presents a very impressive algorithm for arbitrary-palette dithering that is animation safe . > This paper introduces a patent-free positional (ordered) dithering algorithm that is applicable for arbitrary palettes. Such dithering algorithm can be used to change truecolor animations into paletted ones, while maximally avoiding unintended jitter arising from dithering. He demonstrates it "live coding" style in this[1] video where he writes a demo in 256 colors of a "starfield" animation with color blending and Gaussian blur style bloom. The first animation at 6:33 using traditional ordered dithering has the usual annoying artifacts. The animation at 13:00 using an optimal palette and his "gamma-aware Knoll-Yliluom positional dithering" changed my understanding of what was possible with a 256 color palette. The animation even looks decent[2] dithered all the way down to a 16 color palette! If that wasn't crazy enough, he also "live codes" a raytracer[3] in DOS that "renders in 16-color VGA palette at 640x480 resolution." [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [this video]