You are both correct.
1) Resizing in itself gives no benefit unless extra detail is added to the artwork already done.
2) Adding detail
can be done, but will require going over a huge amount of work a second time; effectively re-doing the whole thing (for a third time), simply using the 1024 as a template.
There are many decals on this aircraft which I have produced, using original photographic evidence. This required tedious tampering of perspectives, angles, viewpoints, colours, contrasts, brightness levels etc., trying to match the result to the inaccurate original texture. And, through not anticipating the need to re-do this stuff, once I had completed what I needed to do for 1024 resolution and transferred onto the relevant .png files; I did not save the art files separately!
Also, increasing detail in any one area would necessitate work everywhere in order to justify doing it at all. (Because there would be obvious differences from one region to another). Much of this work has involved very careful aligning of new artwork over the original texture. - A very time consuming process when it is realized that the actual aircraft has a few discrepancies with Baranger's original work.
But there are other difficulties which leave me reluctant to resize. - I have worked on many of the files found in the 'Models' directory, not just the 'Livery' file. This includes separate files for propellers, engine internals, pilot, interior colours, glass, instrument panel (which also serves as a bulk-head) and so forth; which are all from the 'Models' directory, since they are common to all available liveries. And as yet, I do not know how to add a livery to the existing Models directory for it to become available in the flight menu, so I have had to keep swapping files over and renaming them each time, in order to test what I have done. (Please remember, I have never done any computer programming at all
EVER! - only basic artwork and photographs).
I will know for future to
begin work at high resolution although I still do not know how this would 'fit' onto the original parameters of Baranger's work. But having spent many many hours trying to understand how the files interact as well as which files to work on and then doing the extensive graphical modifications, this aircraft is going to remain at 1024 res! (Nonetheless, it is going to be highly accurate in most respects).