As an early user of a good HUD in the A-7D, I saw pilots that used the "clutter" feature to eliminate the speed and altitude scales on the HUD. Later, I flew the Viper and we had a lot more things dislayed in front of us, and could not eliminate much of it.
We learned to mentally "de-clutter", but the good news was we could check certain parameters without using switches and such.
The F-35 helmet seems to me to be over the requirement for data and stuff desired for weapon employment. I do not have the F-35 manual, and hope to talk with some pilots here at Eglin.
I like the use of the helmet visually for off-boresight weapon employment. However, the very stable and fixed HUD in front of me seems more reliable and doesn't need lottsa alignment procedures like the helmet. Too many optical and "boresight" things to get working together, seems to me.
As to the thread, I like a HUD display when I fly the Reaper drone or other UAV. The "feel" of flying something seems intuitive to a real world pilot. Not sure about the pinball wizards that never flew a real plane and pulled a few gees.
Gums sends...