One of those positives was the 49 minutes that Glasgow's Ollie Smith played after a year out with injury.
Smith suffered a serious knee injury while playing For Glasgow in France last December. The 24-year-old came off just before the 50 minute mark at against, but Townsend said he was replaced purely as a precaution after so long out of the action.
"Ollie had sore ribs from the training week so we wanted to manage him, but he is fine," Townsend told Scotland Rugby News. Smith played 40 minutes at full-back and nine minutes at centre.
"He actually trained with us in November [when Scotland were playing in Autumn Nations Series Tests] and was available this weekend and it was good to have him back," added Townsend
"Glasgow made him available for this game at the start of the week and it was a good runaround for him and it was certainly physical."
The Scots had been together during the week leading up to the fixture and had been coached by the full national team coaching panel. Although the physicality of the Italian saw them run out comfortable winners the Scots did enough to show the value of such fixtures.
Ollie Blyth-Lafferty scored Scotland's only try of the night.