Over many years, every now and then I have been working on a space exploration and trading game. The latest incarnation is called Solarex, written in Java, and available from Sourceforge (GPL v2):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/solarex/A long time I had been hesitant to add a first person space flight view, because I felt intimidated by the technology like OpenGL. Also, I didn't like to bundle libraries of 5 times the size of the actual game, just for a 3D view. But times change, OpenGL is everywhere nowadays, and 5MB are no longer a big bundle.
So I'm now working on a first person space flight display module for Solarex. For the next while it'll be a separate project, focusing on space display and movement. Later it will be integrated in Solarex and become visible through a new "depart" action from a space station or space port. Internally the stellar systems in Solarex are full 3D already, so there is not much to do in terms of adapting the stellar system data to the new display module.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/solarex ... olarex_GL/Open questions are, how to handle the planets. Use bitmaps? Use models? Procedurally generated models? Almost all content in Solarex is procedurally generated.
At the moment I have a star background, a nebula and a ship model rotating around two axes for demonstration. I'm going for a definite retro look with this, very simple, untextured geometry. At least for the time being. The pyramid thing there is a space ship. Really
In soviet russia, code debugs you.