I don't understand... why is it hard to "get around" in the virtual cockpit?

Hold your space bar.  Move your mouse.  Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.  Assign mouse look to a free button on your yoke/stick, and you toggle it on/off as needed.  I have a few extra items in my yoke that were unassigned, I set them to "move eyepoint" front/back, and left/right.  Between those buttons and mouse look, moving around VC is almost as easy as if I had a head tracker.

This mouse look feature is one of the things that sold me on the upgrade to FSX.

VC is reality in simulation... I don't use 2D panels in any plane in FSX, and if I download planes w/ no VC, they go in the trash immediately.  It is too restrictive to live in a 2D world!