I've seen question 1 raised many times over the years and  I don't really have an answer for you I'm afraid.

Question 2 - first, if you hit the spacebar when in spot view, it resets the camera angle to behind the plane which you might find useful.

A better solution is Active Camera. With that, you can position yourself (your view) exactly where you want.

Here's something different whilst we're on the topic of view modes:


First: BACK UP YOUR FS2002.CFG FILE

The add the following to it:

Under [CONTROLS] put this line:

pan_in_cockpit_mode=1

Then under [keyboard_main] put these lines:

PAN_LEFT=9,8
PAN_RIGHT=9,9


Now when you're in the 2D cockpit view, you can pan your view around in the same way as in the virtual cockpit. This can be done by either using the hat switch on your joystick or the tab key (for panning left) and shift+tab (for panning right).

Note that the spacebar will centre your view when you're done looking around.

It looks a little strange at first because the view of the cockpit itself pans with you. But this is seen by some as an assett as it allows you to keep your eye on all your instruments whilst looking around.

Give it a go. If you hate it - just restore your original FS2002.cfg file.

Edit: It'd solve your problem with seeing the canyon walls from within the cockpit WebbPA 

Excellent tip - I for one have never even looked in the view options.

Edit: Just tried it and i'm not sure it's going to help in this case.

"Fixed" holds the heading of the view, so it doesn't follow the tail or direction of the aircraft but stays at whatever heading it was set at.

I thought what WebbPA meant was how to avoid the viiew "slipping" when you turn. It moves off centre quite a lot sometimes.

No doubt he'll clear that up.

Yeah - fixed means fixed heading for the point of view - not relative the aircraft.

I'm experimenting with Active Camera now - I'll ge back to you if I have any luck.