You guys say it's quite easy, but this is coming from someone who has played the game only since this past weekend (and hardly then because I have to avoid a roommate who will try talking to me THE ENTIRE TIME). I don't know most of the markers or directions. I even looked something up online and was told to "head west" and ended up south. That was in part from running from a spider, bumping in to things, turning, not knowing which direction I was facing anymore, and continuing to run because I was still in danger. It's something I needed from the beginning, when I first logged in. And just FYI, when you're busy running from something, you can't exactly open menus left and right to check the direction, time, location, etc. So NOT having it on the HUD can be a matter of life or death - especially if I take the wrong turn and have to go back through that creature's area to get where I really need to be!
I'm also not familiar with lighting effects yet either. I know when it's daylight, and not daylight. That's it. I'm guessing you have to climb up on top of the leaves or grass to see the sun? And what about when you're in a cave like the one near the weak laser's wire? There are no lighting effects there, just pure darkness until you figure out how to make a torch.
But if you read back about the clock thing, you'll see that I went to the far side of the map, not knowing how long I had left in daylight. It started to get dark just as I got there, and a few seconds later my HUD turned green. Okay, got it. But if I knew that darkness was *approaching* without having to open menus to see it, I probably wouldn't have traveled over there to begin with. I would have stayed in the area near my shelter doing "local stuff" and waited until the morning to travel across the map. Again, newbie here and not very familiar with much yet. A compass that tells me I'm traveling north would also be helpful when I know I need to travel SOUTH to get back to my shelter. And that's because I hadn't yet figured out the trail marker system (I actually thought it might be like the tethers in Astroneer, or the pathfinder tool in Subnautica, where it lays down several things to help you find the exact PATH to travel to get back - as opposed to a single marker that you put in the very spot you want to get to later, so I avoided it for a while). The entire first day was spent trying to figure out the mysterious machine, so I hadn't even thought about trail markers until AFTER it said "it's getting dark, you should probably set up a shelter to sleep in" or something. So the compass is definitely necessary, and once you do learn the layout, you can traverse the landscape better.
Besides, as a former soldier, the compass is something you had everytime you went to an unknown place. I can't imagine some scientist would make a human carrying case (the thing you spawn out of when you start playing) and NOT think about a compass to navigate with.
Also, while lighting is fairly good above ground, I still don't see the sun enough to know it's exact position in the sky in this game. There's a lot of grass blades in the way of that. A HUD clock would also let me judge *how long* it takes to get from one point to another, so I can judge how far to go with X amount of time left in the day.
As a new player, I still think both of these are necessities from the get-go.