Rather than making the SLFs physically piloted, I'd much rather they just retconned telepresence into simply "remote control while wearing a VR headset". Remove all signs of the pilot from the SLF while in use (or possibly an obvious hologram for the sake of the operator, complete with transparency and glowiness, like many VR games have), but keep the physical cockpit the same (sometimes people might want a human to operate one) and make whatever crew member who is using an SLF pull a VR headset out from under their chair to operate it. It would also remove the need for the fade-to-black transition, as we would be physically putting a headset on in order to operate the fighter.
The same visualisation could be used for the galactic map and for operating the turrets, as both of those views take you out of your cockpit seat.
It would also look pretty cool to see a load of people on the bridge all wearing VR headsets. It could even be a cash-earner for FD, as people might want to spend ARX to customise their headset with googly eyes or red trim.
Of course, multicrew telepresence is bad and whoever thought that infinite projection range, readily accessible, ultra-high bandwidth, high stability hard-light holograms is a good idea clearly needs to review their design choices. Telepresence requiring a large, specialised module and having limited range, like the fighter bay? That's workable without making the entire setting become nonsense. But not everyone being able to operate something across the entire galaxy from the comfort of the sidewinder in their garage, that's kind of dumb. They should have just had multicrew being that a guest simply possesses an existing crew member, which would also have the advantage of the ship's owner not having to see the abominations other people create with the holo-me.
