LOL. You use materials you find in settlements to engineer your gear.
Whereas walking around in ships for no reason would get very old, very fast.
Who said walking around in ships for no reason? Why not leverage gameplay mechanics. Go down to the cargo hold to offload and load new cargo for trading.
Go to the module bays to fix busted modules (maybe smart to do that on a planet)
Disembark properly
go down to the Vehicle bay to deploy the SRV
go to the CMDR's ready room when exiting, make it a customizable space that you can decorate with stuff you find in the game, like your Hutton Mug
Get your CMDR some rest when you log out for the night by going down to the sleeping quarters and going to bed
manage Mats in the Mat storage, like editing your Ignore list
Go to wherever on the ship stuff is installed, to do engineering
Change seats to fly the ship. Always wondered what the left seat view is like on a Cutter. How cool would it be to fly the Conda from the forward dome for planetary landing? or the lower Deck for an ASP X
Have the ability to dock with other ships and walk across to explore or transfer cargo
They'd need to change the Random appearance of enemies in Normal space though, maybe give a 3-minute Sensor Warning or something.
Ship interiors in VR would be a whole new dimension of gameplay possibilities. How cool would it be to go search for a Coolant leak on the Hyperdrive, or try and find the Polymorph.
I don't see that much complaint about the Station and Carrier interior gameplay, other than the Gravity defying drinks in Outpost bars