I think DFaber and AndersG experimented with Nasal/JSBSim-based "FDMs" for boating - to get this going, I'd probably use Nasal for starters and look for existing open-source projects that already solve the problem, i.e. there are a few boating/yachting sims - and we're already using some stuff from DangerFromTheDeep (submarine sim). So, we'd have to do a little research to find out what's already out there (ideally, C++ & OpenGL based, not any major new dependencies) and then investigate if it's feasible to reuse certain components. But for starters, FlightGear scripting via Nasal should certainly be up to the task. Development-wise, a "ship" would just be another 3D model with a few windows and instruments/views. And all the fancy RADAR/ARPA stuff would be trivial to support due to our extensive Canvas/MapStructure-based 2D plotting support.
But having "underwater scenery" (elevations!) could easily quadruple the size of our scenery
Then again, efforts like osgEarth by poweroftwo have demonstrated that it is perfectly possible to implement alternate scenery engines next to the main engine, even without FG having explicit support for this kind of thing. And we've seen
osgOcean-related discussions for years:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Implement_OS ... FlightGearBut without any C++ level changes, this would contain quite a number of workarounds and simplifications. On the other hand, even "Advanced Weather" started out in scripting space, and was merely augmented over time - and even today, it's primarily scripted code.
So it's not impossible, the question is how serious people are about this, and what exactly they can contribute in terms of features, knowledge and code.