Yeah. It's only a cone if you're sneaking. When you're not sneaking, it's the whole area, even though the control is called "Show Sneak Cones". They could probably rename it to "Show NPC Awareness Area" or something. I find it quite useful when not sneaking.
Side note: I changed the color of the bolded text on the OP. Let me know if that makes it stand out too much. It's supposed to stand out, but I don't know if it's making it harder to read now. I felt like just bolding text wasn't noticeable enough.
