I'm a bit iffy on the whole 'what's included in the in-cabin view', for the simple reason of eye-focus and distance. Sitting in a car is one thing - you have different things at different distances away from you. The steering wheel and switchgear is at a different distance to the dash, which is at a different distance to the windshield...
I've never liked in-car views simply because you can't do it right on a flat screen, where everything is flat. In a real car, you don't look at the steering wheel - you look over it because it is lower than eye level. To look at it, you're looking down, and focusing closer. So to have an in-cabin view with a steering wheel painted onto the front of it (no matter how photo-realistic) to me is unrealistic, and it is a distraction to me, because it intrudes into my field of vision, which in a real car is spent looking through the windscreen at the road. I can look down at the gauges or down at the wheel, but when I'm looking through the windscreen, I'm never looking at the steering wheel.
Having a dashboard and other nice visuals at the bottom of the screen hinders your view of the road, as useable space on the screen is being taken up. I used to play MS flight-sim, and my biggest bugbear was that 80% of the screen is taken up by the cabin. You can't see where you're going. In a real plane this is not the case - you adjust your seat (i.e. point of view) to give you the best view out of the windshield, while allowing you to look down at the 'dash'.
Anything that puts the cabin on the screen with the forward view is going to eat up your field of vision, and I like my field of vision. Hence when I played GT, I always ran the bumper cam. Always.
While having the realistic cabins might be very nice to have (I'm not saying don't have them), I for one would find them annoying.
Also, as long as the game displays on a flat screen, it's always going to be less than it could be. In a real car you are constantly moving your head and eyes to look around. You focus on different distances as you're looking far ahead, close ahead, in your mirrors, at your dials... etc.
The only thing I could think of that would sufficiently model these things, and allow a realistic in-car view, would be to ditch the TV and run a setup through some sort of motion tracking VR headset. That way it could display an accurate field of vision, and move your viewpoint as you move your head. Difficulty factor: If you have to ask, you don't want to know.
But, I'm just being picky. I'd go more for field of view than visual eye-candy. There's no piont having a photorealistic dashboard if you can't see over it...
Very good post! *thumbs up*
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