Hey everyone I'm new to the site so bare with me if this doesn't make any sense.

I'm used to playing Fallout 3 and NV, Skyrim is my first Elder Scrolls game. I seem to remember from Fallout that if you see a person in the distance and they show up on your radar the radar would show a red dot if they were an enemy or some other color if they were a friendly.

Does Skyrim not have a similar feature or am I just missing it?

I have concentrated my leveling up on sneak, archery and light armor. I frequently come up on NPC's in the wilderness without being detected but I rarely know if they are hostile or friendly. I can walk right up to them and let myself be detected and see if they attack or not but this doesn't seem a very efficent way of learning who is who. I don't ever get any kind of indicator on my radar unless I'm already detected, then I get the red dot to represent hostiles. I could just pick them off from distance with sneak attacks but I'm afraid I'll kill someone that could have been a friendly and/or ruin a chance encounter.

Does anyone have any advice on this?

Thanks in advance.

it's there, enemies have to be obviously hostile for them to appear as Red dots, if you worried about killing a friendly, you can shoot an arrow and miss on purpose, if they're hostile, they go into search mode because of hearing the arrow and become a red dot.

Am arrow shot near them will alert them and they will pop up as red dots if they are an enemy. As an archer using sneak I use this method often.

It makes sense...otherwise, what magic would let you know if someone is a hostile or not if you are looking at them in the distance?

I think they only show up when they (enemy) notice where you are or are looking for you. You can use the alternation spells or for seeing who is who.
Also, you can use the shout . But they appear as the same color.

It's funny because I had the same character you're describing and I was asking myself the same questions with that character, which was my first.

The arrow in the wall was an excellent idea, has not thought about it.

Detect life is an illusion spell who work pretty much as an wallhack, creatures at range show up as red for hostile or green as friendly, even with 100 magic and low illusion skill you can cast it a couple of seconds to do a friend / foe identification, it's not perfect as only enemies who will attack at sight show as red, not robbers or enemies who will not attack you at distance.

Aura whisper is a shout is a wallhack who dont give friend / foe but show everything including undead and robots.

If 96% of what you see on the road and in dungeons, caves, grottos, camps, ruins and forts are hostile anyway, what diff does it make?

Used Detect Life in OB and it was essential, but they're all enemies as far as I'm concerned.