I feel your pain, am still trying to get used to that cockup... what were they thinking? The obsession with VC; it's nice to have it, but don't force me to be hindered by pseudo VC textures when I don't want them.
I certainly prefer the FS9 way of being able to look around. My thoughts:
In FS9 I fly default (2D panel) most of the time. Looking left, right etc. hat switch or num pad.
Two scenarios:
Pressing W loses the panel and retains the PFD only, bottom of the screen. Looking left an right now will only show scenery, no part of the a/c.
Not pressing W (retaining 2D panel) will give you in a Posky 7xx or most other add-on aircraft unimpeded view to left and right. Not so in the default, MS 7xx. In the MS a/c, despite being in 2D mode, if you look left or right, you'll see some VC looking outlines of window posts and the like. Ugly and useless.
It never bothered me because i don't fly the MS default a/c. However, I did on a couple of occasions see a file at Avsim that did away with those ugly views. I can't remember the name of the file but obviously the author was as miffed as many of us and had decided to do something about it.
Now I'm thinking that he probably edited the aircraft.cfg in one way or another, I doubt that the issue would have involved messing with the .air file.
I am hoping that in FSX too the operation would be a simple one unless of course the now defunct Aces team have embedded yet another nasty into the sim and taken the secret of how to fix it into the grave.