well.. I have never really understood what pointers are and how to use them properly...

There are not a lot of reasons you would want to use a variable as a pointer. In fact this is the first time I have ever needed to and this is getting on 10 years of programming for me. However now that I know I might find it more useful and use it far more often.

There are tons of reasons to use a var as pointer, function calls by ref or by value are just one of them.
Guys, pointers are your bread and butter when working with C, and they will break your neck when you don't get them right (they will still do when you can get them right, but at least you can debug it then). So learn your goddamn pointers!

Other than the two examples provided, what else could they help with? Even the function call could be replaced with having the function return the value. I am being serious as I have not had a need for them before now.

It is quite helpful with my dashboard as it allows me to save about 1000 lines of code and makes it far more dynamic when using other items.

When you need to change two variables with a single function call, you're forced to use pointers.

That is true. I was not thinking of vars passed into functions, there are dozens of built in functions in 3dgs that we use all the time. I am more thinking of odd ways to use them, such as my dashboard example.