"A lot of the ship hud is dense with useless information."

Yeah but they have a useful instrument panel. The panels in SC are not particularly useful except for combat. There's 3 separate graphs that display your power usage in the Cutlass, not counting the HUD.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but landing in hangars or on pads in SC requires third person mode. You have no tools to check your clearance except experience. I have no issue landing F-35s in VTOL VR without autopilot assistance, or flying IFR/VFR in MSFS, but in SC I feel like I'm piloting a brick through a tank-commanders vision slits. Even dedicated fighters place the pilot so low in the cockpit that the entire bottom half of the screen is just interior and MFDs. Real fighter pilots can look down at a decent angle, because visual is essential in dogfighting which is the only kind of fighting this game has.