Well you should be imagining a 31st century spaceship with clear data about the things around it (which we've established ED ships have) creating a simulation of the environment.
The only reason it would not be realistic is if it's not advantageous.
http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/kobayashi_0_brighter.gif
You already have that - it's called your scanner.
Let me draw this parallel: In the real world I fly radio controlled airplanes - big, expensive, and very fast ones. I also have flown light aircraft (real ones) a few times. On occasions we have real, qualified pilots turn up at the club wanting to try out the models and scoffing at the idea of needing lessons, feeling that they'll be much simpler to fly than real ones. Every time it happens they are brutally surprised (usually at the cost of the immediate destruction of their expensive plane) by the fact that flying in third person is completely different to flying in first person and is in fact much harder to do (especially when it's coming toward you and left means right).
In a REAL situation like the one ED tries to simulate the pilots would fly in first person because it's the easiest and the most accurate. They would have a third person reference (the scanner and/or rear/lateral views) as does a modern aircraft but the primary mode would be first person. That is the REALISTIC way to fly. That is why submarines are SO much more difficult to operate than ships because there is zero first person view and EVERYTHING is a calculated third person view.
What you want is something that they put into games to try to make up for an extremely limited field of view, the inability to easily look around, and the lack of other sensory input (motion, directional sound, wind in your face, etc). In short, the game does not offer enough realism so they give you the "crutch" of a third person view to "cheat" it. This is also why VR games ARE in first person, because suddenly you have a lot more realism and you don't need the crutch.
I'm not trying to judge what you want, or say you should or shouldn't have it. I'm not saying it would be good or bad. I'm just saying that what you are asking for is LESS realism, not more.
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Replay is asking a lot. Unless ED was designed with this from the start it could be anywhere from near impossible to a massive pain to add in now. An proper set of external cameras though would be child's play so I'd stick to that objective if I were you.
With NPC pilots soon to be a thing I'd really like to be able to hire a copilot in any 2+ seater and sit back with the external camera taking in the views while they fly me around
I disagree... as the original suggestion pointed out all you need to do is record the basic data from your instance for a short (maybe 60 seconds) period that your computer uses to generate the view. I think the problem with adding it at this point would be more one of security - recording that information on your computer would make it more accessible and
might lead to new methods to cheat or hack the game - and even if it didn't they'd still have to test like crazy for it to make sure that it couldn't be used as a hack, wasn't going to unbalance something, and worked as intended. That'd be a bunch of their coding time diverted from their predetermined roadmap, in order to placate a percentage of players, for a feature than makes no gameplay difference, and which they've already stated very plainly that they simply don't want.
While I can see the current camera maybe getting some refinements at some point, I'm not holding my breath for anything significantly more than we've already got.