The following existing games do not have a see through body:
Jurassic Park: Lost World - Did not render legs but one arm and the shoulder & boobs.
Hitman 2, Contracts, Blood Money - all have full body rendering. Animations are not identical in first person and third person mode (sometimes noticed in mirrors). In "Contracts" the animations in first person mode were quite nice. In "Blood Money" the camera is moved forward a bit hiding the body more. disappointing. The animations with firearms are not as polished as they could be.
Thief: Deadly Shadows - Full body rendering, same in third and first person. Flawless implementation.
Mirror's Edge - Full body rendering. Model seems to be identical in interior and exterior using LOD. Very slick.
OP Flashpoint 1985, ArmA, ArmA II - Full body, same interior as exterior. Camera truly attached to head. Even in vehicles everything matches. The detail for arms, weapons and weapons operation is simplified and lacking.
Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 (and 4?) - The body is rendered but often one cannot move the camera far enough to see it properly.
Crysis - Full body. Not sure how they did it but it looks amazing.
KA-50 Black Shark - A helicopter flight sim. Flawlessly executed. Its predecessors had only a set of legs when looking around, no arms.
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I am sure I forgot something. Generally speaking, those who implemented it succeeded at least moderately well and often extremely well. It adds loads of immersion and body awareness.
For something like Heroes of Stalingrad, the best solution is probably to render the lower body as from the exterior model, and keep using the custom made high quality first person arms and weapons. A hybrid.
Biggest problem for them to face is mismatch in syncing the upper and lower body, and having to deal with an obvious side-effect of having simple animation system and almost zero inertia - people change postures, direction acceleration etc superhumanly quickly and this looks wonky.
EDIT:
To be honest, Im still amased at the lack of legs in FPS games. I mean, geez, its 2010 now, we have reflective water, realtime shadows, all kinds of mapping, destructible terrain, but no legs...
I know what you mean. Rendering quality, triangles, sounds etc keeps going forward at quick pace but animations and physics are far, faaaaaar behind. Games can look great in screenshots but always when seen in motion it stings the eyes. People are so used to it they don't really notice - they come to expect it. But later when looking back, they will wonder how on earth they didn't think of it as bizarre.
