Definitely agree. You don't really realize the usefulness of the radar until you've gotten accustomed to using it naturally (though, of course, the real benefit is using the radar is not just knowing how to read it, but knowing how to react to what you learn from it).

When I first started playing AC I didn't use the radar at all. Granted, they've probably made some improvements since the last time that I was really playing a significant amount of AC (which was right around its initial launch) but it just didn't seem very useful to me because I couldn't intuitively understand it from a glance, I usually had to look at it for a few seconds to get the gist of what was going on and by that point the radar has already wasted more of your time than it's saved.

It actually wasn't until I returned to AC after having played Elite Dangerous pretty heavily for about a month. I will say that - in my opinion, at least - I think it's generally a bit easier to see the radar in most ED ships because the orange UI has good contrast on the generally dark/black backdrop of your ship, whereas the blueish radar in SC can occasionally blend with other elements of the UI or silvery/shiny parts of certain ships. Once ED got me used to the notion of reading a radar in a 3D space however it became much easier for me to use the radar in SC. Once you're comfortable with it it's definitely an extremely useful tool to have. So if anyone else is like I was at one point, kind of ignoring the radar because it isn't really necessary, I would still recommend training yourself to glance at it occasionally and eventually it will become natural.