that is NOT "texture upscaling"

[AkiraJkr]

Firstly and foremost: No. It's not texture smoothing. Because texture smoothing would mean to take, for example, a 512x512 and smooth it, without increasing it's size to 1024x1024.

It is upscaling because it increases the size of the texture, and applies a upscaling method of your choosing, and the size YOU want.

The feature is only there for people who wish to use it, and it can certainly help disguise a bit that the game was made for handhelds, but it can't do miracles. To have a miraculous effect, would mean for a user to utilize the Texture Replacement feature on the emulator to create a texture pack faithful to the game's art, and make it look great, and high res.