[JJ_SO]

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   So that's fine for me, as my dreams of a Z6 or other ML bodis are now just that .......dreams.

  The next time I'm in town I must go into a decent camera store and look through "all the latest ML models" ..... I want to see what the EVF of the top of the range Panasonic looks like with it's 5.6 Mps sensor.

  ML still has a long way to go to match it's optical counterpart!

They will never arrive at the state your OVF where your specific needs are - they always will need power to show something. So for all kind of photographers who need to wait a long time for action to happen, the OVF will remain as the only option as long as there's no self-sufficient power source in a camera. 

You also will be disappointed by the Panasonic EVF, although the numbers indicate a better experience, Nikon did a very good job with the optical magnification - so, the experience of just viewing the finder picture will be no better on Panasonic - but Panasonic did a much better job with organizing the icons. A lot of people (including myself) complain that there's no way to view the EVF picture without any disturbing icons. Nikon was stupid enough to think "oh we already have a display and need no extra display bar (like on DSLRs) - we can load all kind of shit into the EVF". It just looks poorly organized. 

If the camera is set-up properly, I want to compose my picture without fat icons at each side. If the camera is set up properly, it goes to standby very often - that's a question of changing habits, pushing the release button to start it.

In some aspects - wether you want to or can see it or not - EVF already surpassed the OVF and very often I'm just much better off with an EVF - for my kind of photography. Dim light, manual focus override of AF with contour highlighting and enlarging the focus area, realizing to be in the wrong WB mode (which I don't care much as I  mainly shoot RAW).

But once again, I cannot understand what your expectations were. I suspect your were expecting "more" of what an OVF shows. You can wait a long time until an OVF shows the effect of long exposure times to the picture (like Olympus does).

I don't think, the viewing epxerience of a Sony ⍺9 or a ⍺7 RIV will appear "better" to you than your D500's - but the blackout free 10fps or more with continuos tracking and a close to 100% hit rate will leave your DLSR back in the dust. The finder is never an exact reproduction of all picture details coming out of the camera. It just has to be good enough to get the picture. And to get it properly focused and exposed. With this, the OVF doens't help as much as an EVF.

Nikon will have a long way to go to reach Sony's AF qualities. But as Sony already did a lot of pioneer work, Sony users financed the progress of Canon or Nikon or Panasonic (which still relies on CDAF) and Sony's way was even longer.