Heh, my apologies. Seems Pinsane solved issue #2 two.
I found this post:
Object VR with left/right AND up/down rotation
where he also supports up/down rotation - but as a side note, I just realized that he also solved the rotating while zoomed issue.
Thank you!
(Now I do get a FATAL error about POW not being supported, will look into that myself)
Any takes on issue #1 ? :)