I think that the sprite based effects are not as interesting as all the dev tricks used for genuine scaling. Scaling is about the same sprite actually scaling up or down, not about several sprites being used to make an animation. The same goes fort rotating.
It seemed obvious to me.
There's an obvious technical difference, sure, but what difference does it make practically? Either the effect is well executed and looks good or it doesn't; neither approach is going to automatically look better than the other.
If you and exodus want to dismiss it all as fake and unworthy of discussion, that's fine. Nobody is forcing you to read this thread and cry repeatedly "it's not
really scaling!". We know what it is, we know the sky is blue, we know water is wet.