Little Dragon, the newest ver of UVMappro has a wonderfull way of showing you the results of every
movement of every vertice on a perspective view of the model as you are doing it.

Yeah, my Ultimate Unwrap3D has similar features. Provides some good feedback while you're working, particularly with regard to seam alignment, texture-stretching, and distortion, but doesn't greatly simplify the task of stitching the pieces together.

Then again, I only recently figured out how to use those interactive 3D widgets which control the position and orientation of the cylindrical UV projection, so I might be missing something obvious.