Hi halmi, a little bit more info:

re:
> I can't think of any modeling situation where I wouldn't want the pivot point to be consistently somewhere in the viewport.

The viewport rotation pivot point is always at the center of the 3D viewport. The eye point for the 3D view is formed starting from the pivot point.

The main things that modify it are the Reset and Zoom area viewport buttons, and panning.

When panning the pivot point shifts so that stuff like this will work:



- Michael