I don't understand the 1/16th scale recommendation by Valve.

At 1/16th, I've run into a few problems:
a) microbrushes and defective brushes (some of this I could only have avoided by making time-consuming mdl's.)
b) inabilty to line up precisely enough to fool your eye (this is the real issue)
d) washed out looking textures

The detail in cs_italy is horrible because of it. The dusts are cartoonish.

Dust is done at 1/4 scale. And really, given how cheaply the skybox renders, it seems to make more sense, and to give a better result at scale of 4 instead. Or even at 1/8.

Lastly, once you've done a good job on terrain, you can't scale the displacement if you change your mind and want to use a smaller or larger scale, without rebiulding all your work. YOu can scale the brush under the displacment, but that doesn't change the displacement.

Anyway, am I missing something?

Thanks