In a perfect implementation this might be like this:
You are able to detach from your pilots seat by a hotkey. You suddenly find yourself in a FPS like environment standing next to your pilot seat. Now you can walk around and explore the ship.
Every ship has it's own interior. A small fighter probably has no more than an engineering panel behind the pilots seat, and a small living area with a bunk, small galley and most likely a plumbing unit. An airlock which might be functional if you have landed on a planet? (see "walkable planets and bases")
If the vessel becomes bigger and bigger, there is obviously more and more to explore. Living room for a small crew, sick bay, hallways to different sections like engineering, hangar bays, gun turrets, cryo chambers, prison, elevators to other levels and huge cargo compartments. For bigger ships the pilots seat might be placed at a bridge containing big screens displaying data about the ship and the environment. They could seriously help to make strategic descisions.
It's important that the interior fits to the exterior appearance of the ship, it has to be believable. This would greatly add to the perception of the size and type of your ship.
You can go to damaged sections and repair them. You could visit captured pilots in the prison and talk to them, they might have important information. You could fight intruders. You could go to your hangar bay and select one of your small vessels for a quick interception while your ship remains where it is.
This might be easy to implement after the Feature "Walkable 3D Bases" is added. Technically seen the ships interior is quite similar to a base.
What intrigues me about it is the complexity of observing a pilot while he is in combat; rendering the "interior" of the ship at the same time as rendering the exterior of the ship viewable from the viewport/viewscreen/cockpit. I suppose the same thing applies to bases, but nobody would notice if they were stationary.
although im new to this game that would be a cool feature, id equate it to the virtual cockpits in Microsoft combat flight sim 3, as i have some experience making planes for that game, how that is done tho its not a walkable interior but u can change to various seats such as bomber, pilot, gunners etc. in that game they use two versions of the cockpits one from the outside, obviously less polys and then one from the interior. I would add that this would complicate the modeling/designing process for the ships quite a bit, but if it works well from a performance standpoint id think it would be well worth it.
This seems like yet another superfeature. It would not be easy to implement, of course it might be a somewhat easier if some sort of 3d framework is used (such as Ogre or sirikata).
Of course it would be really nice if it would be implemented as a unified framework (and not as separate mode) and in case a weapon hits your vessel or it is damaged you can see the impact inside. It could also enable a lot of features such as disabling a ship using a precise shot to a specific component. I hope I can live another 20 years to see it
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein
