It's not going to change . . . . I've logged over five and a half thousand hours on P3s (B and C models), and I've seen the inside of these new P8s, and read quite a lot about their performance, and importantly, I've seen and been in the flight deck.
There is absolutely no way this new P8 is going to come anywhere near the established space and flight comfort of the P3, not even taking into account the very 'squeezy' flight deck for the long, very long missions this airplane will be asked to do.
Long missions of course, only if they don't try and fly it at any sort of low/lowish altitude, the result of which will surely be very much shorter missions, or an appointment with the AAR tanker.
And don't even start me off on the decision to operate these airplanes from remote airfields without a flight engineer.
Difficult to know where to begin with your post EW73.
The flight deck is just somewhere the drivers do their job, all the MPA type work goes on down the back. When the pilots are in their seats, you do not need a huge amount of wasted space all around you. For the mission crew sat at their seats operating, there is no need for a lot of wasted space. I agree that it would be nice to have, but there is a cost saving.
The airframe and engines are so much more reliable than a P3 that there is no problem operating from remote airfields, and a modern airframe is designed to be operated by two pilots. A spare crew member/3rd pilot, can occupy the jump seat for the low level stuff. The aircraft is more than capable of long missions, unless you want to do 8 hours of MAD searching, and having AAR capability is an added bonus.
Just my thoughts
Y_G