I recently implemented a proper bilateral blur for my ssao shader but it seems to have the problem that it only works a few feet in front of the camera before depth discontinuities can no longer be detected. I assume the culprit is a non linear depth buffer. If I linearize the depth buffer I will still need to deal with a significant lack of precision for farther distances as well as the increased shader complexity. Has anyone else had this problem before? None of the material I read mentioned linearizing the buffer is there an alternative I should know about? Anyways here is my fragment shader in glsl:

uniform sampler2D color_texture;
uniform sampler2D depth_texture;

varying vec2 vTexCoord;
 
const float maxdiff = 0.0001;

varying vec2 blurCoords[4];
 
void main(void)
{
	vec4 center = texture2D(color_texture, vTexCoord);
	float centerdepth = texture2D(depth_texture, vTexCoord).r;
	vec4 sum = center * 0.2270270270;
	float weightSum = 0.2270270270;
	
	vec4 sample = texture2D(color_texture, blurCoords[0]);
	float depth = texture2D(depth_texture, blurCoords[0]).r;
	float closeness = step(abs(centerdepth - depth), maxdiff);
	float weight = 0.0702702703 * closeness;
	sum += sample * weight;
	weightSum += weight;
	
	sample = texture2D(color_texture, blurCoords[1]);
	depth = texture2D(depth_texture, blurCoords[1]).r;
	closeness = step(abs(centerdepth - depth), maxdiff);
	weight = 0.3162162162 * closeness;
	sum += sample * weight;
	weightSum += weight;
	
	sample = texture2D(color_texture, blurCoords[2]);
	depth = texture2D(depth_texture, blurCoords[2]).r;
	closeness = step(abs(centerdepth - depth), maxdiff);
	weight = 0.3162162162 * closeness;
	sum += sample * weight;
	weightSum += weight;
	
	sample = texture2D(color_texture, blurCoords[3]);
	depth = texture2D(depth_texture, blurCoords[3]).r;
	closeness = step(abs(centerdepth - depth), maxdiff);
	weight = 0.0702702703 * closeness;
	sum += sample * weight;
	weightSum += weight;
	
	gl_FragColor = vec4(sum.rgb, 1.0) / weightSum;
}

Attached is a screenshot of my shader in action using the common Sibenik cathedral test model. As you can see the edges are quite pronounced on the players weapon and on columns close to the camera but become blurry as the distance increases.