A large cockpit yes, but does it contain any information? no, it does not - it is purely for the feeling.btw. I just looked at the few examples, Starlance has a quite large cockpit, so does Aquanox.
True... I try to be a bit more specific.I think the criticism of the first HUD should be more specific, guys. Not good is way not good enough constructive criticism. Also be more specific what each example does right, and what could be better in each example.
In general, most HUD in games are symmetric. I'll elaborate for Freelancer.
In the lower corners, there are 2 lists; the left one is for all objects in the area (or at the players choice, only important ones, waypoints, loot, or just fighters or (dockable) stations.) the right one is for the players ship, it displays loaded and activated weapons, amount of shield batteries and repairbots. The energy system is rather simple, and displayed in the 3 bars at the lower edge are for shields, armor and afterburner. The upper center bar describes normal actions: free flight, auto pilot, docking maneouvre and formation flight. Top right corner is the games menu.
About the steering itself: it was optimised for mouse use, thus you were able to click on any menuitem/list if you wanted, but I always used the keyboard which is was much faster.
The more i think about it, the more I see the need to do a meeting and discuss what we want in the game. otherwise it is rather difficult to design a HUD which only displays what we need, and not to many irrelevant information.
cheers
nico