This is an example of what stealth looked like during it's heyday (before the heat changes that made firing while silent overly difficult and way before Engineered effects like emissive):
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq9TDEvg-tU
I personally didn't have any problem with the system back then...stealth was not at all insurmountable. Yes, a ship that could remain silent was very hard to target with gimbals (fire at will turrets actually didn't care much, but they were very rarely used at the time since the only things weapons could do were damage and turret damage was always poor) and even if you did get close enough to resolve the target (and they auto-resolve if they fire at, or even try to lock missiles/torpedoes on, you...at any range), the low thermal signature dramatically reduced the gimbal arc.
That said, there were huge trade offs to decent stealth (not the least of which being no shields) and the possibility of encountering such loadouts encouraged more loadout variety.
Main issue was playing a version of the 'cup game' with a bunch of FASes that looked identical and thus could not be reliably focused in wing combat.
A more recent stealth encounter, but also pre-NV:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiHk9hMpLIA
Anyway, NV, in it's post-nerf state, is far less a hindrance to stealth than past changes like weapon heat loads.
Generally, either there is nothing else around and you know where the silent running ship is because it's the only susupicious unresolved contact on sensors, which you can further pinpoint any time it's thrusters flare up, if it passes in front of anything not the same color, or just gets close enough to eyeball...OR there is a lot of sensor clutter around and NV highlights all sorts of stuff, making it of only modest utility in isolating a stealth ship.
There is the issue with AI being near 100% accuracy with fixed weapons even without target lock to help with leading, but that's an AI issue rather than an issue around the mechanics themselves.
AI isn't
that accurate. Higher ranks are quite good, better than me, but no more so than top CMDRs.
My SLFs (especially if I am piloting them) last way longer against a squad of Elite NPC rail Eagles and Asps than against a veteran CMDR packing rails.