Honestly the "real" soler system model would actually break one of Sean's other things he mentioned.
He wanted to have the planets closer than they really would be to mimic the artistic science fiction covers and movies where you would see multiple moons or planets on the horizon
If they had actual star system properties you would lose much of this effect
Also I could potentially see it as a confusing task as to where you are with planetary rotation built into that as well.
One of the other issues I could see is you see the trade route lines in the areas in which those would have to follow the roations and AI would need far more programming.
So at some point there had to be a trade off and my guess they wanted to have artistic vision over programming
I don't think so. And I'm not asking for a
realistic solar system model -- Sean actually originally wanted realistic planet distances but the artists overrode him on this because of the images you posted, I'd just like to see a model in this game where planets and moons rotate and orbit. You'd see them shift and you might not get planets in the sky ALL the time, but you'd still get them. Another good way would probably be to put more moons in the sky.
Space Engine is supposed to be a realistic simulation of space, and you can get picturesque skies with planets, moons, and multiple suns surprisingly often. This is what I was afraid if when wondering what balance NMS would take between science and fun, because what we currently know about astronomy theoretically makes some really cool stuff possible in our real universe.
Planets with three or four suns and moons looming large in the sky are theoretically possible. Astronomers theorize the existence of tidally locked planets where one side is hot and the other side is an eternal glacier. I saw one such planet in Space Engine today where the dark side is occasionally lit by a massive moon that orbits the planet. Every time it comes around the day side it creates a gigantic eclipse. I'm not even getting into theories about ice volcanoes, subglacial oceans, titanic chunks of diamond, or oceans of methane.
All I'm saying is, real science can contribute cool things to a sci-fi artistic vision.
As for navigation, if they did this it would probably be best to give the game a map screen for each system like Elite does. Frontier: Elite II way back in 1993 had two kinds of maps for solar systems: one that just laid out the planets and moons on a 2D diagram, and another that was a scale model orrery showing the system as it is with orbits and such. And while flying in Elite Dangerous you can turn on orbit lines to orient yourself. I was hoping NMS would do all of this, just with planets closer to each other than they would be in real life.
Edit: Example of a picturesque sky in Space Engine. This is supposed to be possible in our real universe.