Hi Jim & Gary,
Strange thing to say that brakes are a little used function, I'd hate to be in your plane

if you have a twist grip rudder based joystick, having brake on the trigger can give you fine control over differential braking if your not using multi engine aircraft you use the engines to assist turning.
As far as viewing: the 'top hat' works but I find is the slowest way of looking at what you want, for me space bar and mouse is perfectly precise in locating exactly the
control you need to adjust and quickly
regards
Steve