• Several promising concepts to support a human operator in closing the navigation loop find their origin in research performed close to and sometimes even over half a century ago • Some of them are conceptually superior to today's solutions but had to wait more than a quarter of a century for the required technology (in terms of cost, performance, size, weight and reliability) to become available • If meanwhile an alternative has proven sufficient and established itself as a standard, solutions that are conceptually superior may end up as a missed opportunity • With the first transition from electromechanical displays to programmable electronic displays during the Eighties, there were several good reasons to mimic the representations of the previous generation of instruments and maintain dated concepts such as the command display • This is no longer the case • Given the challenges concerning safe navigation in high density traffic environments with a high level of automation, there is both a need and an opportunity to improve upon the current way primary flight and navigation data is presented and aircraft are controlled • Fortunately, designers of such pilot-system interfaces do not have to start from scratch!