Walk-around mode in free flight doesn’t seem useful in its current state, in fact it feels counter-intuitive to require us to remove engine and pitot covers for airliners at the gate.
Here’s a suggestion to make the feature more useful.
Expand it by adding an office to the scenery SDK so that scenery developers can place one in their airports. This office would serve as a starting point when loading a flight, where we have a computer to create and manage flight plans and check weather, a notice board to check notams, and a space to interact with other pilots etc. We would then walk to our aircraft (or take a shuttle with the crew), and begin the flight.
I feel like this would be more immersive than just starting outside the aircraft. Make it optional of course so people who just want to start in the aircraft can do so too.