One of the standard criticisms of Thief: Deadly Shadows (which lets you switch between first- and third-person modes) is that having movement linked to body animations even in first-person creates problems for precise movement. There have been reports of e.g. turning around only to find oneself falling off a beam. So whatever animation system you use needs to be sophisticated enough to avoid such problems, and in a first-person game it may not seem worth the development resources.

Likely, as I am incapable of excreting bricks. Cool superpower though.

It really depends on the game. I always liked the realization in the ArmA franchise, and also in the Hitman series. Full body awareness in ArmA, combined with head tracking, is pretty awesome.

I also remember how well full body awareness was realized in the amazing Infiltration Mod for Unreal Tournament from '99, which also had full weapons collision with the environment, for example.

I believe nobody has mentioned it yet, so I do.

If you're interested in seeing your leg(s), look at:

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Now, to be honest: I'm not sure if you can look down to see your legs (I honestly doubt it), but you definitely see your right leg at least, when you kick enemies around (which you will do quite a lot). ;)

Edit: oh...and definitely look at:

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Takes time, uses more graphics resources, 99.9% of people will hardly ever see it.

I was here intrigued by the disaster this game is and thinking, because it's such an outrageous failure, it'd be fun to play. But, boobies, bonus.

I still can't believe how much this feature is dismissed in first person games because it 'adds technical issues'. Many features added technical issues but in time have become a normal part of games today. It boggles my mind to think devs would not learn to improve it and make it even a more important part of the first person games in future. But to dismiss it outright?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15pi8vrUx9c

EDIT: necro-bomb!

So this has a name. Huh.

A few days ago I was in a spree of watching videos of upcoming games. One of them was FPP and it showed a combat scene, where you only saw a sword flying in the air, not even an arm or a hand holding the weapom. I couldn't get over it (certainly not during the time the video lasted).