Bryce has an option to use 48 bit colors if I recall. Although the bit depth gets reduced to 32 or 24 for the finished image, the extra bits hold fractional values which are of importance when rendering. I believe this is important for keeping colors correct during calculations involving lights, transparancy, shadows, etc. If everything had to be rounded to whole numbers the transitions between colors wouldn't be as nice and cause more artifacts under certain conditions. I think this is mentioned somewhere under the rendering options section in Real World Bryce 4. I guess the 96 bit just means that they measure smaller fractional values which might make certain atmospheric effects appear better - even though they'll probably get reduced back to 32 bit for screen display purposes.

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Barbequed Pixels?

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There might be something worth downloading.