I searched for a thread on this topic, and all that came up is a thread from 2012 that's locked. I've seen a lot of mentions by people of late regarding the removal of the HUD, why you should, and occasionally why you shouldn't. In fact, I was just in a conversation with LOBdawgz on the subject, and I had some things I wanted to say, but I didn't want to hijack that thread... so, hence this thread.

I haven't seen anybody really state my opinion for me anywhere, so here's the deal.

In real life, I've been a hunter. I've hunted everything from ground squirrels to bear. Bow, crossbow, rifle, pistol, and shotgun, I've used them all. What has this to do with the HUD? Well... I keep hearing that removing the HUD is for immersion and realism. I'm all for immersion and realism, but...

The thing is that, in real life, my bow had a sight... a little red dot on an adjustable arm positioned just above the arrow. My rifle had sights, my pistol had sights, and oddly, so does my shotgun (though the sight is actually a flashlight). So I'm wondering if, in the name of realism, I should remove the sights from these weapons before I go hunting in RL? Hmmm...

So then there is the issue of the "Magic HUD that shows hostiles and their positions. While I agree that knowing whether or not a critter in your vicinity is "hostile" is a bit beyond the norm, consider this... When I'm out hunting, I can hear the breath of a creature like a deer, elk, or bear form a fair distance. I can smell deer urine for up to a hundred feet depending on the wind and its direction. I can see scat on the trail, and I can reach down and touch it, and in so doing learn how long it's been there, or conversely, how long ago the animal passed this way. In that manner, I can tell what kind of critter it is, sometimes get a hint of it's general age and health... I can see tracks, giving me a rough impression of size and weight as well as type, and what direction it was going.

Somehow, I just KNOW that there's a predator in those bushes 50 feet off to my right. and I can make a fair guess as to whether it's a cougar, bear, coyote, or bobcat. Actually, I've never been wrong in that case.

In a video game, none of those tells are available. Ever tried smelling a bear in-game? Where is the scat, and where are the tracks? Where is the tiny pool of urine that often partially fills the tracks? How can I re;ace all of those things that tell me in RL where and what I'm facing? I'll tell you, it ls the HUD and what it does is give people who couldn't hunt mice using a mousetrap the opportunity to be hunters, and function as if they had the ability to hunt in real life whether they are hunting bandits or bear...

In other words, it lends realism to the character, believe it or not. Unless somebody would liek to show me why, in real life, I should wear blinders that remove 30 degrees or more of my peripheral vision, earplugs so that I can only hear major sounds, and noseplugs so that I don't smell anything. Oh, and I suppose somehow I must be prevented from examining tracks and scat as well....

I have my HUD dimmed down to barely visible, and I feel that in real life, I would actually have a much better idea of where and what my enemies are than I do in game.

This is all modern weaponry. Look at a bow in Skyrim and tell me if you see a sight or a stabilizer.

However, I agree with the general sentiment. HUD conveys gameplay information the player was meant to know, in a way that replaces real world senses we don't have access to. I need a health bar because I can't feel my character's body, her pain and fatigue. Her physical state could be presented in many different ways, of course, and HUDless people often explain they rely on the screen going red and shaking when you're close to death. That's great, if they can and prefer to play this way, it's their choice. I don't see it as inherently more realistic than a health bar, but perhaps it's more immersive.

I've answered the question long ago and never got back to it: no HUD for me. And as someone put it before, ancient weapons didn't have "sights".

Playing on first person view, screen free of anything but the landscape around, I feel that no HUD allows more freedom; not sure why though.

The sight in that style of bow is actually a spot chosen by the archer on the inner upwards arm of the bow and the tip of the arrow to compensate for range, while the tip of the arrow functions as the horizontal sight. Aligning the two points on the target is essentially "sighting in". The problem with this in-game is simply that the spot does not equal a hit using game mechanics. ...and it's much worse in third person whether you use a bow or a spell. In real life, it would be similar to turning towards your target, drawing your bow, and closing your eyes...

I can understand quest markers, mini maps outlining enemy positions and even enemy health bars, but removing one's own HP/MP and stam bars just seems like pushing it too far, to me.

It'd just be an annoyance.

I understand and can appreciate both views on the matter. For me, however, I always use the HUD as I feel that it does indeed provide input that one's full range of senses might detect and I view it as an effective way of providing that information. My character can feel if she is hurt, smell the campfire of a nearby group of bandits and her big elven ears can hear faint noises carried by the breeze. I like the crosshairs as they feel like a natural part of my Bosmer's naturally uncanny ability with a bow.

Nds....your a DiD player! How in oblivion can you play DiD with NO IDEA of your current health or how much your are or are not injuring your enemies?

If you have mods to remove the compass, thats realistic, but no health bar?

So you get into a fight with a bandit you think is about your level.....you slug it out.......will his next hit kill you? Will his next hit likely trigger a Kill Cam end for you? You take chunks of each others health...its a battle of attrition.....the one with a tiny bit I'd health at the end, lives!
How on Nirn will you know?

Sure you CAN play with no HUD...but youre gonna be restarting very, very, frequently.

The cross hair thing. I used to play with it for accuracy with my bow. But now I don't for the following reasons.......
1...real bows don't have an accurate sighting, some have a kind of marker, but the aiming skill is really in the archer
2....you don't need it, really, just aim with the arrow tip a little below your target....if you need long shot pin point accuracy, drop into sneak and it's the centre of the eye ball. All of Which you doubtless know anyway!
3..... It's more fun to skilfully shoot your prey than be told exactly where to aim
4......at long range the games aim isn't pixel perfect anyways, getting very close registers as a hit.

So, turn the health bar on the x hair off and get cracking..simples

Yeah, but in game you also don't have to allow for cross winds.....agreed on 3rd person, much harder and archery on horseback! Pah! It's a wonder my steed survived me!

Also of course the game takes care of the arrow drop due to gravity.......imagine having to account for that on long shots!

Gosh Rick, as I said, my HUD is very dim... but it's still there. I can see my health bar as a tinge of red, though measuring the exact length is difficult. I sometimes cast healing to long because I can't see when the red reaches the end. That is, I can see the red, but I can't see the ends of the bar. However, a smear of red that is very short certainly tells me I 'd best do something quickly, eh?

One question on the cross hair thing, I can barely see my cross hair perhaps 90% of the time, but it's enough generally speaking. the things though that if your cross hair is off and gone, so's that eyeball when you're sneaking...

I think the answer to this issue is customization. Then no one would have to play on my settings, and I wouldn’t have to play on theirs.

On my console games where I can’t use a mod to customize my HUD I turn the transparency all the way down to remove it. It’s risky to rely on the blood spatter on the screen and heartbeat to judge your health in combat, but I’ll take the risk to get that compass out of my face. This also gives me some peace with the screen spatter and heartbeat which I very much dislike. I just dislike the perma-compass more.

Optimally, I really believe that a system something like Fallout New Vegas is optimal if properly done. That is health, and stats available on demand invisible when not wanted. A simple toggle key to bring up a compass, or health bar would work if a "Pip-Boy" sort of thing wasn't wanted. Even a "toggle transparency" for the HUD would be good.

I play DiD too, with no HUD. With time, you learn how to estimate your amount of health, spot the centre of the screen when you use a bow, etc. No big deal actually.

Not quite sure where you're coming from Neil. I know your HUD is currently dim....but you wanted to know if it's a good thing to go with no HUD. Which means of course NO hud. Not hedging your bets with a little bit of barely useful HUD eh!

Grits gets by on blood spatter and heartbeats.....so I guess it can be done, but honestly by the time your on half health with no heartbeats as yet. The next hit might just kill you.

Let's make this as blunt as an iron mace........you got 100 Health. But no hud ok! Mr Orc face does 51 damage with his mace. You aint gonna get heart beats after one hit and you guess it's ok to take another hit......Kill Cam. No HUD = No chance.

I'm guessing this ain't for your DiD plays then!

No disrespect to Ladyonthemoon......but I would love to know how you can estimate your health level with no indication. Do you mean perhaps frequently going into the menu, where health is shown numerically! But on screen, during combat how can you possibly know how much damage you have taken. And more importantly how much more you can take. Or do you run some kinda mod that gives you low health warnings in some other way? Now if your gonna tell me that you have simply learned the damage delt by every combination of race with every weapon type including power attacks and at various levels of you own armour skill,and armour rating......well! I can't see how you survive at all through DiD. I've been killed at level 2 by double snips of the big mudcrabs.....and that's with a health bar showing!!!

I would remove the HUD if I didn't lose my health bar. That is the only thing I'd like to keep but since I can't just have that then I just put up with all of it

I think personally that it is (or should be) a case of to each his own. I don't find playing without the HUD entirely to be realistic, and I find it actually detrimental to immersion. I mean the thought in the back of your mind "Jeez, I wonder if i can take another hit, or if I should use a potion whether I need it or not?" is, to me, a distraction. In the end, perhaps neither way is any better than the other except in the mind of the player.

my ideal HUD for Skyrim would be the "invisible" status bars plus a small simple compass down in the corner of the screen that has only the cardinal directions on it and nothing else. Once I start modding Skyrim on PC, that is what I will be getting. For now, I have make due with the limited options on Xbox and I vacillate between no HUD and a very dim HUD, but always with the crosshair off.

Neil, buddy, you need to take that sight off your bow and learn to shoot instinctively. In Hood River, Oregon, there are two archery shops, but they do not compete with each other since they offer completely different types of products. One shop, can't remember its name, since I have never actually been there, sells modern archery equipment with compound bows outfitted with pulleys, range finders, sights and all sorts of other gizmos. The other, http://www.raptorarchery.com/, only deals in wood and wood laminate longbows and re-curves. You can take classes there to learn how to make your own bows from a natural wood stave, and you can learn to shoot instinctively like the owner of the shop does. If you visit you can see all the stuffed bears and cougar that the owner has shot with a simple un-sighted wooden longbow that he made himself from scratch. The owner also makes his own arrows and even laps stone tips. When I was there he showed me the broken stone tip he used to shoot one of the stuffed bears in the shop. He's the real deal.

Anyhow, I tend to use the instinctive method of shooting both in real life and in Skyrim and I prefer it to any of the gap shooting or sighted methods, although the gap shooting method works too, in both real life and in Skyrim. Back when I played my No HUD, No Music No Fast travel DiD Khajiit hunter, he got pretty good sniping moving deer at the limits of a Hunting Bow range using the instinctive method of shooting. If I don't play an archer for a while, my skills decline with lack of practice and I find myself falling back on a gap shooting aiming technique, using the arrow tip and trying to judge distance and make some adjustments to my aim point, etc. But there is nothing quite as satisfying as the instinctive method of shooting, and when you get practiced at it, you will find your shooting much quicker and more natural than trying to sue a sight.

Although the technology behind a bow sight is not that complex, it just seems out of place in a fantasy world. When I play FO3 or Borderlands, I enjoy using the bow sighes and PiPBoy GPS compass, etc. But I prefer not to have such things cluttering up my screen in Skyrim.

Well thank goodness video games do not have 3D surround odor emitters. Last thing I want is B.O. from a bunch of smelly Nords stinking up my living room every time my character walks into Jorvassker.

That said, if you turn off the HUD and turn down or off the music, you may be surprised at the clues Skyrim offers the player as to the type and location of enemies. You can hear wolves howling, bears growling, bandits conversing, etc. If you have a 7.1 surround system like I do at my cabin where I play on weekends (its isolated and I can turn up the volume to the point where a dragon landing will shake the house), you can pinpoint the exact direction and have a good idea of distance just by listening to the sounds. A sneak thief can tell if people are watching him as he sneaks through the City to pickpocket both by the comments they make and by the direction they are looking. These types of clues are in the game if you take the time to look for them. If you rely less on one sense, you tend to pay more attention to the other senses, and if you turn off the GPS Compass, you may find your self paying more attention to these other clues the game offers.

I think that is why people say no HUD play is more "immersive" because you end up paying more attention to the actual sights and sounds the game offers if you turn off the GPS Compass since with the compass on, you don't really need to listen to that bear growl to know what direction it is coming from. Just look for the red dot. And if you see a red dot and a sneak eye open, you know the bear knows you are there. Turn that stuff off, and you end up paying more attention to the sights and sounds of the game, which will give you the same information if you pay attention to it closely.

Of course, if you do not have surround sound, then your ability to pinpoint direction through sound will be impaired. But you can still tell whether there are enemies nearby, what type of enemy they are, and estimate distance to the enemy. To an extent, you can even tell direction with just stereo sound. My flat in the City does not have surround sound, and I can get a basic idea of direction by turning my character, since the sound will be loudest when facing an enemy.

Sorry if I seemed ambiguous...I didn't mean to. No, for me personally, I find that I lie to have the health bar and HUD on-screen, just not so bright that it breaks into my immersion. For me, that works. My question is really an attempt to determine how others feel about the idea that the HUD takes the place of all of the information gathered by the senses and then noted consciously or subconsciously, resulting in information that some folks like to call a "magic" HUD being information not in evidence. the position of enemies and such who are not visible.

For me, it's not "hedging my bet" it's simply using what's available in an unobtrusive and more or less realistic fashion.

I use a certain addon(can't recall the name, Immersive UI I think?) that takes off the HUD until it's in use! Say I get hit, the health bar will pop up until I'm fully healed, likewise if I use magic or start sprinting. The cross hairs also pop up when I pull out a bow or magic, as well as when I hover over something that's interactive. I like it this way.

I just use the iHUD mod for the best of both worlds haha.

Skyrim's HUD is my favorite HUD in the series. The only major thing I change on PC is to remove the quest and POI icons from the compass. For this I use a mod called http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35154/? LIH lets me move my HUD around the screen, in-game. I can re-position both text messages and HUD elements with arrow keys. It also provides a slimmer, smaller compass design.

Using this mod I keep screen information pushed far out of the way, near the edges and corners of my screen. I have access to the information if I want to look for it, but I don't feel like it's shoved into my face.

Turija......
You got us mixed up mate, ha! I'm the one who shoots without the crosshair......but I do use the eyeball centre dot when shooting in sneak...well, you have to cos it's where the arrow does go!

Ah! Right sorry Neil...I'm with ya now. You are happy with the partial HUD, but you want to know what others do?

Well for me....I have to see the health bar to have any chance to play DiD and that means since I'm on console, I have to have the compass too.

I WOULD use iHUD, but... I already use SkyUI, and it offers conveniences that I've grown used to and don't want to give up. For that matter though, my health, magicka and stamina bars aren't visible until needed either. It's just the compass that doesn't go away, so I have the transparency set to make it barely visible.

Turija:

I don't have surround sound, and even if I did, I'm half deaf in my left ear as the result of an explosion. Even worse, I was legally blind until about a year ago. It's odd that my lack of hearing doesn't seem to effect me much in real life, as much as trying to make headphones work out...

Funny, Hood River's only about 125 miles from my house... I'm not really sure what you mean "instinctive shooting" though. When you draw your bow back is your thumb on your jaw? is the arrow head in your line of vision? Is the target somewhere on the other side of the arrow head? if all of those are true, you are just using a different type of sight. I used to shoot an old recurve bow I had that way, and it was okay, just not great. Once I went to a compound bow though, I wanted a sight because the range had increased dramatically.

I use SkyUI and iHUD.

Really... and they don't conflict?

Ha! Sorry for mixing you two up. I fixed it.

Well if you have got a hearing impairment, then we won't hold it against you to rely on the red dots in Skyrim. Like you said it is info our characters might get through their senses which would obviously include more information than what the game can give the player through the sights and sounds of the game. For me though, I enjoy playing without those red dots to ever want to turn them on, although on Xbox unfortunately I have to if I want to be able to see the status bars.

My cabin is only about 20 miles from Hood River, so we are practically neighbors. By ihttp://www.wildernesscollege.com/how-to-shoot-a-bow.html, I mean you just look at your target and shoot, like throwing a baseball. Its crucial to always draw the bow to the exact same spot when instinctive shooting, For me, its my index finger that always hits my jaw at the same spot and my thumb is on top tucked out of the way. If your eyes are focused on a target in the distance, then you will have a double vision of the arrow tip and you won't see it clearly or even be focused on it. You let your subconscious mind do all the complex calculating involved with judging distance and holding the bow at the right angle given the distance to hit your target at that distance. You are correct that your brain is processing all the same information as it does with gap shooting or sight shooting, but it is processing it in a completely different and more intuitive way.