1. To the best of my knowledge there is three generations of panoptics. The first generation (commonly called panoptics) and second generation (commonly called live scope) were mainly for looking forward and down with the main difference being the picture quality is different and much better with the second generation. The third generation has a feature called perspective view. People still call it live scope but it has an additional view called perspective. To use perspective view you need a special mount for the transducer. You mount the transducer like normal for forward/down view but when you want to use perspective view you turn the transducer sideways so it looks sideways/down instead of forward/down. This is what a person would want when fishing in 10 ft or less of water. If your in lets say 5-6 ft of water its more important to look forward and sideways than it is to look down and forward.
The majority of this video is shot in 5ft of water. He goes as shallow as 3 ft and as deep as 12 ft. The detail is so good you can actually see when a bigger fish swims buy it cast a shadow. You can also clearly see when baitfish swim buy and buy the size of the fish some appeared to be smaller panfish and the larger ones were more than likely bass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XJbMZK6wmM
2. Don't know never seen it
3. Don't know...yes some have touch screen but some don't...no idea about idea about ease of operation
Al I know is this. I have watched multiple YouTube videos regarding live scope and perspective view. I saw livescope in action on someone's boat and I was impressed with the sensitivity and detail. When it comes to bass fishing pros I tend to not pay much attention to their endorsement because they are paid to pimp...BUT there is a tons of pros who have zero affiliation with an electronic manufacture and they the majority are running live scope. In most cases when a tour level pro has no affiliation with a company they will use the tool that best suits their needs. Just look at how many boats are running live scope. Some run all three units at once. They use the combination of Lowrance for mapping and Hummingbird side scan when idling around to find targets to fish but when the trolling motor goes in the water its live scope to see what the fish are doing live.
If I were not such a tight wad I would already have one. I will have one within the next 1.5 years I can assure you of that. It all depends if I want to dip into my stash or start a separate kitty fund just for a Garmin. I plan on getting the 1022 bundle. Of all the stuff wrote in your post the thing that stood out the most to me was you admitted to having a friend.