You're absolutely right, and it would be ideal, and if I'm not mistaken was the goal of the hirez plugin. Which was a decent first attempt but I believe that hudbot did it better. It was able to scale everything back to size when overlaying on the interior shape. If someone could find andrew to make a plugin for 1.4 I'm sure he would be able to make a better hires plugin.
The mian problem with the plugin is it just crashes the client way to often so I made this as a more stable alternative.
Until a better plugin is released I think I'll refrain from making higher resolution textures. As far as the original art file. The possibilities are endless. Personally I think it looks better than those crappy HD textures that look nothing like Tribes.
Its like putting lipstick on a man, some people are into that kinda shit whereas most of us are not.
I had an idea. Is there anyway to add TGA file type to 1.40 and use the hudbot mem.dll? It would probably be an ideal alternative as far as file size and not having to rely on low quality PNG's