Is there a way to view items and/or vehicles at a distance"

Two part question:

  1. When an item stack is far away and there are more than 6 items, we can’t read the 7th+ item in the pile. The extended description does not seem to show the items. I’m running around in town with the infected bite start and I’m trying to conserve my stamina jumping from house to house and vehicle to vehicle.

  2. Is there a way to view the battery and/or gas level of a vehicle without being physically next to it and using the examine function? We can already see from a distance if a car is mechanically okay, but it’s a bigger risk to run to a car if it’s not driveable.

For items you can use the capital v by default key to see all items in a certain radius around you .
As for vehichles you cannot do long distance gas checking but you can use the x key (the one that allows you to examine items from afar to see if a car is in working order (if missing wheels, controls, driver seat, gas tanks or if the engine is faulty)

Use a mouse and hover over the portion you wish to examine. Apart from that go look at it. I mean, apart from aesthetics. How else would you know what is going on with a vehicle or something unless you closely examine it?

you can also press the semicolon key to look around with the movement keys