Displacement bottom/top banding issue in max 2021

[HenrikBC]

I have run into a banding issue in max 2021 - most noticeable in displacement - when using bitmaps, but also in the output map with any curve adjustment as well as the mix map, which both seem to drop to 8 bit precision as soon as they are introduced into the material flow (they introduce steps that weren't there before). I wonder if anyone can shed some light on this.

1. This is my 32b displacement map from AE loaded into a Vray Bitmap slot and applied to the default 3ds max displacement modifier. Most of the displacement looks fine - except the bottom part where the value stepping is jarring. This is what I want to fix.
2. Bitmap plugged through mix map which is then used to displace. I would except this result to be identical to 1, but this is somehow worse. What is the mix map doing? (I did some further testing and found that the Composite map does not introduce these artefacts, so I'll be using that for any future displacement shader flows instead.)
3. Bitmap plugged through Output map with a curve applied. This helps with the sharp edge but introduces banding.
4. Bitmap plugged through OSL "SmoothStep" shader with High: 1 Low 0. This fixes the edge + banding issue, but is a bit more heavy handed than I would like.

I also tried a standard 3ds max Bitmap as the input for everything above, with the exact same results.

A couple of questions:
- Is the Output map with any curves adjustment just super imprecise/8 bit? And the Mix map likewise? I was totally clueless about this until now.
- Is it a common problem for 32 bit/displacement maps; where 99% of the displacement is looking great, but the step from 0,0 to anything above 0 gets a weird jitter (going from 0,99999 to 1,0 has the same issue in my tests)? Or is this an After Effects issue?
- Is there an OSL equivalent to the output map (or any kind of map, that does not introduce banding) with a bezier curve that can be adjusted (eg. to an S-shape) very precisely, to alleviate this issue? I found and tested the OSL Curves (float) shader, but it is really, really difficult to control the curve without bezier tangents.

I have been stuck in this hole for a while and would love some fresh insights on this.

[HenrikBC]

No one else has run into this issue?