Until we get some kind of technical details about how the HUD color works (and I doubt we'll ever get that) it will be very hard for me to understand why it would be such a hard work to do. Two reasons:
1. Something in the game code obviously tells the game to display the HUD in a very particular color. If it was white I would even believe that it's an undefined color, but the bright orange is obviously a very clearly defined value. What on Earth can stop Frontier to define another value for these object, or give us tools to change that value? Case in point, they do the same with weapon colors and engine colors. It's obviously a value in the game that changes the color or the hue of those objects.
2. Judging by the PC modding tools something similar happens indeed. Players can edit the HUD color by changing different values of in-game objects (by objects I mean HUD elements which are, I think, simple graphical objects).
So: If modders can do it on PC, why would it be such a huge task for Frontier in their own game?
And another thing: COVAS. It was also a modding opportunity on PC while we didn't have the official support to change ship voice on consoles. And now we suddenly have the option to do so, almost the same way. It's a simple and elegant solution. (And quite awesome.) So yes, it is obvious that there are many individual elements in the HUD. But just as they are now defined to be orange, they could be defined to be any kind of other color in my opinion, as any other element in the game can. It would also be another channel of income for Frontier, because many console players would gladly pay for new colors in the store. Myself included.
In my opinion, to settle this debate we would need one of two things: either getting the option to finally change HUD colors, or getting a detailed explanation from the developers as to why it cannot be done. This is not like space legs or atmospheric landings, which we fully understand are huge features that take extremely long to develop. But a (seemingly) simply customization option, which has an easy way on PC, and also a lot of similar features on console too (see weapon and engine colors), it's very hard for the community to swallow why a long-requested feature is simply denied from them.
It's not that complicated...an .xml file determines the colour palette values for both the HUD and the GUI but the way the game uses the singular palette is all interconnected from the same file...simple implementation but difficult to adjust the values effectively and professionally without a rethink on how the entire HUD/GUI colour component works.
It's obvious from the editor I showed above how the colour system works via that .xml file...but as game devs, releasing an editing tool that produced unpredictable results would be a bit of a disaster. Coming up with another solution that is acceptable in a professional sense is more difficult...how do you limit colour sliders to only produce colour schemes that don't break the whole thing visually for a game platform not conducive to editing or modding game files?
It's one thing modding a game, but a realistic solution from FDev to what seems like a very simple issue is way more complicated than you'd imagine. On PC, we're used to having the tools to mod stuff, and clever folks to make those very tools...it's part of the ethos of PC gaming. Modding stuff on Xbox on a closed file system is another thing entirely and would break practically every rule Microsoft have in place to prevent it.... it would invalidate the console warranty, break the TOS of Xbox live... can you see where I'm coming from?
I fell foul of those very rules on my Xbox 360 with Skyrim a few years back... I used a PC save game from my PC copy of Skyrim, edited from the in game 'console' to add more gold and some nice armour etc and used a 3rd party program to convert the savegame to an Xbox save... Microsoft found out and removed my
entire gamerscore...5 years worth, all my achievements, everything and branded my Xbox gamertag with the heading 'Cheater'. I had no appeal, no argument and was lucky not to have been banned from Xbox live. Microsoft used the argument that I had gained Xbox and in game achievements whilst effectively cheating which made those achievements null and void.
This was on a single player game with no multiplayer so my editing files had no effect on anyone else... It's a huge kettle of fish there with Xbox and modding. Bethesda have sort of cracked it allowing access to PC game mods via their menu system and the Creation Club but they had to disable achievements to get the mod system past the Microsoft ToS I fell foul of in Skyrim. In general, Xbox and modding just don't fit well together due to the file system being closed.
For modders it would mean having access to the game files to mod in the first instance... For FDev to add any kind of editor that allowed such access to this closed file system directly is a pretty big issue.
To be clear...the file edited to produce the colour changes isn't part of the Frontier/Elite Dangerous game directory...it's a normally hidden file in a Windows/user/appdata folder where E-D saves user profile information...system config files, user preferences/keybindings and the like.
