1. Note there's 2 zooms, one for the pit, and one for everything. If you got a spare rotary on your stick, you can get very precise control of views. Critical is a mapped 'pause' key for TIR, so when you get the view you want, just 'freeze it' till you are finished. I don't use precision mode. With a good TIR profile, you should not need it. See this post, and this
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2. You can map your numbers and character keys for the UFC directly to the keyboard, because ED was considerate in avoiding using them in their default mapping, but you'll have to map the other keys, sys,wp,flpln etc to others maybe ins/del/home/end panel.
3. Point of the 3d clickable pit is to be able to do just that with the mouse. Probably best go wit the flow on this one.
4. No 2d panels in DCS. but lots of 'snap' view options. Again if u got a good TIR profile, it takes care of all that.