I've read, somewhere, that you can turn off the Compass and/or the Crosshairs without turning off the Health/Magicka/Stamina bars. Is there anyway to do this? All i've found is the opacity slider.

For the crosshair there is a tick button under "Settings->Display" I think. Lets you enable and disable the crosshair. On PC you can edit your Skyrimprefs.ini found at Documents/My Games/Skyrim.
Make the following changes



[Interface]
bDialogueSubtitles=0
bGeneralSubtitles=0
bShowCompass=1

to


[Interface]
bDialogueSubtitles=0
bGeneralSubtitles=0
bShowCompass=0

Do you know what a .ini file is?
They are documents the game reads to get certain information.
In your My Games folder there is a SkyrimPreferences.ini.
Find the line bShowCompass=1 and replace it with bShowCompass=0.

This should disable only the compass.

Ninja'd

Edit: you can edit the Ini as stated above but these mods provide a toggle:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2204
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3222

It really irks me that you cannot turn off the compass or sneak crosshair on consoles.

I am really glad Bethesda went to all the trouble to make those health/magicka/stamina bars invisible when not needed. That was a really idea great to reduce screen clutter. Too bad I never get to see those fancy health/magicka/stamina bars since I play with the entire HUD turned off so I don't have to see the annoying and screen cluttering sneak crosshair and compass, complete with magical icons and red cheesy red dots.

I wish consoles had a reactive option, where the crosshair and HUD in general would only show up when you use it, just like the health and magic bars do.

But how would the game know when we're using the crosshairs?