Jetstream I mostly agree with you, but mostly because I am a throwback to a by-gone era. The real problem is that nobody designs single task flight instruments anymore. We can argue the superiority of Inside-Out, Outside-In, Grapefruit (Arc-Segmented), Highway In The Sky, Integrated Flight Path Vector and other displays but must do so within the context of the entire information system. If we consider a transport aircraft there is one solution, for a fighter aircraft there is another solution, for helicopters there are so many tasks that one elegant solution is a design dream never to be realized. Then there is the mission. If the mission is to fly IMC along established airways to a high category landing I might prefer one design over another. If the mission is a high speed, low level ingress in zero/zero to attack a target I will never see visually, then I will certainly want another design.
It is impossible to design one perfect system for all applications, but it is possible to merge the best of different designs when there is task similarity.
A real problem for me is that data from simulator studies are often very different from aircraft studies. The cost of a test in an aircraft is much higher than a simulator study so more and more of this type of testing is being conducted in simulators; yet because of limited visual and other cues, I might prefer one display in a simulator and strongly prefer another for an aircraft. I think of video games. I almost always prefer and choose an Outside-In display because these provide the most cueing for the gaming task. I feel the same about simulators, because even the best of full motion simulators are cue deprived environments. In the aircraft I have a preference for Inside-Out displays. The question I am asking myself now is do I have this preference only because I am used to that type of display, or are there other more compelling reasons for the preference?
We are increasingly aware of an age biased flight display preference. The XBox generation see things much differently than the pre-computer generations. Although both can learn to adapt to each others systems, when asked they seem to demonstrate a primacy preference.