I was trying out something before on making custom cockpits, where you could actually see parts of the ship (if they extended into the cockpit's view)
but theres weird crap you have to do with it to make it look decent.
For example, http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5514/nyxcockpit.jpg
A Nyx Cockpit, you can see the outside wings since they extend past the cockpit and into its view, however, it has a clipping issue at the center/bottom, and the cockpit CMP itself had to be stretched by 200% along its Z Axis to look normal when in cockpit view.