Welcome!
Long load times are just something we all have to live with (especially those of us who play GWX) due to SH3's rather silly way of loading the game. You'll get used to hitting LOAD and then going and making a tea/coffee, watching the news, reading the newspaper, getting a new job, getting married, watching your kids grow up, retiring... and then sitting down at your computer again and finding the game has nearly finished loading.
Really, you do get used to it.
Manual targetting, in contrast, takes some getting used to. I played the game for months before switching to manual targetting. So do many others. But once you've gone to 100% realism (no external camera and manual targetting) you find you're literally playing a whole new game - and a much better one.
