True. It is almost nothing to look at. That colorful images of space we get from telescopes like "pillars of creation" are actually composite images gained at long exposures at different wavelengths from X-ray to radio. With you own eyes you will see a faint glow at best. Most stars will appear like a sun. More or less white blobs. Without reference you cannot tell their scale, even if they are thousand times bigger, without filters you cannot really tell their color. There might be an interesting light show close to the super massive blackholes with accretion discs and jets, but again, most of it is happening in gamma. The only hope is that life in Universe is so abundant, that you can just go to the space zoo looking at aliens.