**Introduction to DJI's Phantom 3 Quadcopter**

The DJI Phantom 3 is a highly advanced quadcopter drone that has taken the world by storm with its incredible stability, maneuverability, and high-quality image capture capabilities. In this article, we'll delve into the details of this impressive device, exploring its features, capabilities, and various aspects of its development.

**The Flight Experience: Stability and Control**

As I stand here above Treasure Island, I'm surrounded by breathtaking views of San Francisco's skyline. With the Phantom 3 hovering above me, I feel a sense of excitement and anticipation as I begin my flight experience. The drone is equipped with an advanced propulsion system that provides smooth and stable flight, making it perfect for both novice and experienced pilots alike. The default maximum flight altitude is set at 400 feet (120 meters), but I'll be pushing the limits to see just how high I can go.

**Ground Control: A Game-Changer**

One of the standout features of the Phantom 3 is its ground control system, which allows pilots to operate the drone from a fixed location. This feature has opened up new possibilities for cinematographers, surveyors, and other professionals who require precise control over their aerial footage. DJI's recent announcement that ground control will be included in the SDK (Software Development Kit) means that anyone can develop their own custom apps for this purpose. This move is expected to enhance the overall user experience, providing pilots with more flexibility and control over their flights.

**Descent Rate: A Safety Feature**

During my flight test, I noticed that when descending too quickly, the drone tends to get caught in its own "vortex ring state." However, DJI has implemented a feature that limits descent rates to 2 meters per second (approximately 6.56 feet per second), significantly reducing the risk of entering this unstable state. This feature is particularly important for novice pilots who may not be aware of their surroundings or the drone's capabilities.

**Performance and Stability**

The Phantom 3's propulsion system is designed to provide a smooth and stable flight experience, even at high speeds. I can attest that it feels more like an Inspire in terms of its performance, but with a slightly different character. The drone's stability is impressive, making it perfect for capturing sharp images and videos, even when flying at low altitudes.

**Still Image Capture: A New Era**

One of the most exciting features of the Phantom 3 is its ability to capture stunning still images at high speeds. I was able to take a series of multi-second exposures, which resulted in some truly impressive shots. This feature has opened up new possibilities for photographers who want to capture high-quality images from the air.

**Conclusion: Shipping Now**

The DJI Phantom 3 is now shipping, with both the advanced and professional versions available for purchase. The advanced version costs $9.99, while the professional version is priced at $1,259, both of which come with battery bundles that can be purchased separately. With its impressive features, capabilities, and high-quality image capture, the Phantom 3 is sure to become a favorite among drone enthusiasts and professionals alike.

**A Message from DJI**

The article concludes with a message from DJI's Erik Cheng, who has tested the Phantom 3 extensively. Cheng will be flying more quadcopters in the future, including the Phantom 3. The company looks forward to sharing their experiences and insights with the community, and we can expect more updates on this impressive device in the coming months.

**Technical Specifications**

* Phantom 3 Advanced: $9.99

* Phantom 3 Professional: $1,259

* Battery bundles available for purchase separately

Note: The technical specifications listed above are subject to change and may not be up-to-date.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's norm from Tested.com and I'mjoined today by Erik Chang of DJI Erikhow you doing very good it's been it'sbeen a while since we've seen you butit's been like a year since we came outto almost exact same spot and youintroduced us to the phantom 2 Vision+which we loved it was our first rowentry into consumer quads and we've beenflying for a long time now but recentlyyou guys announced the Phantom 3 andthat's what we're here to talk about soyou have the Phantom 3 models with youtoday what's new the Phantom 3 thePhantom 3 is of course the next in ourphantom line which has been the mostpopular quads on the market for aerialimaging the Phantom 3 has a lot oftechnology that we've been working onsince that has gone into higher endmodels like the inspire one which weannounced in November so a lot of whatis an entire one that makes it so usefulfor film and television productionyou know advanced amateurs and also forjust hobbyists you know who want to getthe best possible quality from the airall that's gone into the Phantom 3 sowe're super excited about it even thoughit looks very similar to the Vision Plusactually most of the inside has beencompletely redesigned so that includesyou know a brand new camera which ismuch higher quality built in Lightbridgethat's our wireless high-definitionvideo broadcasting system more sensorsultrasonic optical flow it's sort ofbest-in-class but you know shrunk downto the size of it and it's still a readyto fly package where you can get out ofbox update your firmware get thesoftware on your phone or tablet andlearn to fly immediately right learn tofly and what's I think we've been reallysurprising for those of us who have beenflying the Phantom 2 for this whole timeis that it feels like a very differentaircraft so you know it's it's similarin that it still feels like a DJIproduct you know it performs in a waythat makes you confident on the sticksbut it's much more precise so we've donea lot to enhance precision performanceand you'll feel that when you get in theair for the first time we're definitelyget it in the air today but let's take alook at the hardware you have with youthis is the the Phantom 3 now this isthe professional version if there's twomodels this time main differences arethe camera is that rightright so we have two models we have thePhantom 3 professional and the phantom 3advanced the main difference is thecamera the Phantom 3 professional has a4k camera also shoots to 12 megapixelsDNG if you're shooting stills lawpictures Ross oh yeah so it's 4k at 30frames a second it's actually a GU HDand the advanced has a 1080p 60 cameraso that's the main differencethe only other differences are prettysmall the the professional ships with amore powerful charger so you can chargemore quicklyI think that's those are the onlydifferences and looking at this hardwareI mean from from a distance aside fromthese stickers red here gold and they'rethere they look very similar now are thethe motor is the same no them so themotors are different the entirepropulsion system has been upgradedwhich means that well first of allunfortunately the batteries are notcompatible we're running for s batteriesor you know fifteen point two volt rightbatteries instead of the three sbatteries and that gives us a lot morepower a lot more output is a highercapacity as well so you get the sameamount of gonna at least c- point liketime it's like it's higher in capacityin terms of watt hours um the milliamppower rating is lower because that'shigher voltage but everything has becomemore efficient so even though thebattery is only a little bit morepowerful we're getting real-world flighttimes of over 20 minutes you know somelow 20s 20 22 23 minutes whereas on thiseven though we rated the battery at 25without a camera you tend to get afifteen-day yeah 50 18 was a we've we'veexperienced what this is well before thealarms are blazing right so there aredifferent motor system different powersystem and then on the bottom you havesomething that you brought in from theinspire one right so there's this littlemodule which you don't see on thevisionary Plus this is our visionpositioning system we call it a VPS andit has three sensors on our two realsensors it has ultrasonic send andreceive and it has an optical flowcamera so these sensors allow theaircraft to determine how far to measurehow far it is away from the ground usingmore than barometer and GPS so this islike a discreet measurement and alsooptical flow camera which lets youdetermine whether the aircraft is movinghorizontally so distance from thealtitude distance is actually that'sthat's not visual that's on opticalsit's using that that the clicking yeahthe ultrasonic ultrasonic the groundright I'm going to hear that when youwhen you when you get close to one ofthese roomsone a slight clicking sound right and wemay hear it when we turn it on becausemicrophones are really sensitive don'tsonic and you hear this kind of thisclicking sound and then put the opticalcameras for for movement for directionsfor moving yeah so that the the the mainreasons we do it are that sometimes youlose GPS so if you fly under a lot oftree cover you have a lot of buildingsaround like very tall buildings oryou're flying inside those are all GPSdenied environments so we have theability to hold position and altitude inthose environments and it's a seamlesstransfer but knows it's not gettingenough satellites in range then I'lljust switch to rely more on that yesit's a seamless transfer there aresituations in which you might be toohigh so if you lose satellite lose GPSfor some reason and you're very high youmight be out of range for the visualpositioning system but if the camera ifthis this sensor package has enough datait will use it a lot somebody want toput to the test as well now let's talkabout the camera because the camera hereis a much improved looks like a muchbigger lens at specially there so thesensor inside for the professional it'sa 4k sensor is it a bigger physicalsensor as well it's bigger a physicalsensor it's it's one over 2.3 so it'sstill a fairly small sensor a kind ofpoint-and-shoot class mm-hmm but it ismuch higher quality than the camera thatwas in the vision plus the phantom 2Vision+ one other thing you know a lotof feedback we got about the phantom 2Vision+ was that the integration wasgreat but shooting video was toughbecause you know we had stepped exposurechanges you notice that there's not agradual exposure to change it was it wasreally our first camera the vision andthe vision plus were our first attemptsto build a camera so we've had a lotmore experience now in building camerasthis camera is is really well refinedand we also got rid of the fisheye lensso ok those of us who are in yeahproduction always have to fixperspective and you see like this giantbubble for the horizon so that's gone wehave a 94 degree rectilinear lens nowand then I can take photos to 12megapixel photos yes so photos are 12megapixel we still shoot to Adobe DNG asan option and and it's all seamless andand one thing which we'll get to I knowis that it feels much more like a camerain your hands because the radio is sodifferent yeah the transmitter looksdifferent that do largely to the lightbridge system you're using for the videotransfer well Lightbridge is built-inwhich is why you see two antennas hereand in fact if you notice there are nowfour antennas coming down into thelanding right treasure so you know thisis a it's a MIMO system just like thatmost advanced routers are out there sowe have multiple antennas on both sendand receive mm-hmm and and this radiowas inspired by the inspired ones radioso it looks very similar it's plasticinstead of metal but we have you knowall the buttons are in the same placewhich means that you have full controlof the camera without taking your handsoff the radio so you can shoulderbuttons you can use and adjustment thereyeah knobs what's the range with thisour specified range is 1.2 miles okayin practice we found that just like withall the other systems out there it'sextremely variable you know so if you'rein perfect conditions you can flyfurther than that of course it's way outof line of sight so you know you shouldmake sure you know what you're doing andit's legal you're doing that and in verycongested Wi-Fi environments might beless than that but we want to get theseup in the air is there anything else youwant to tell us about the the productbefore we take off well one thing is todifferentiate this product with theinspire one because there's you knowthere are a lot of people who arewondering what they get at what theylose and what they get you know from thesystems and you know the inspire 1 wasreally designed for productionenvironment independent filmmakersadvanced hobbyists who might havespecific kinds of moves in video theywant to do it transforms also transformsyou so basically that the maindifferences are that although we have athree axis gimbalyou'll notice that our landing gear doesnot move so you're limited to shootingbasically out of the front of thePhantom 3 whereas with the inspire youhave full range of motion for the cameradual operator support is also somethingyou get with inspire one and and alsoHDMI out so one of the you know theimportant things that one of the mostimpressive things that we've been doingwith inspire one is live broadcast yeahand you are on Good Morning America froma volcano right and they were basicallytaking the feed from your transmitterand piping it right yeah so it wasessentially just you're just using acamera but the camera happens to be veryfar away Wowso with the Phantom 3 you know you cando those things as well but it requiresaccessories and tuning so you have toyou know buy and inspire 1 remote andthen we are going to eventuallylease a firmware update that allows youto do it so oh so you can you will beable to pair that inspire a remotethat's how we did our launch you noticewe did live we did live broadcast duringthe launch went to get phantom so thatsince you're the HDMI also what aboutthe SDK step I know you guys launchedphantoms you SDK is out it's going to beforward compatible with phantom threetaps yeah so the the SDK for phantom 3and star 1 are currently in beta okinspire one will probably come out firstbecause we've been working on that SDKfor longer hmm but I'm very excitedabout the SDKs for phantom 3 and inspirebecause one of the big differences isnow that we're cabled so instead ofusing a Wi-Fi repeaterwe're actually cabled to smart devicesand that means Wi-Fi and LTE modems areboth available for SDK Wow so you can betalking you know at fairly high bitrateto the aircraft while talking to thecloud and so basically that that opensup all sorts of possible video streamingall that stuff yeah that's very cool wecan't get wait to get this up in the airso let's stop talking and start flyingsounds good so the first test we'regoing to do is actually test theultrasonic sensor and that the visualassumption optical flow sensor on thebottom of a phantom 3 we're not whereoutdoors right now so we have site 2 GPSso we're actually trying to cover up theGPS and see how it works ok so it sayssafe to fly non GPS we have 0 GPSsatellites so that tinfoil is doing agood job of blocking those signals andthen in the mode area here on the upperleft it says P op D which is optical sothat's our vision positioning systemokay so we can still let's bring it backup a tiny bit let's give this a try sowe're going to use Auto takeoff it saysyou push the auto takeoff button and ityou swipe it to the right so we'll swipeto the rightyouHeyand pull it up a little bit this is likeI'm working yeah right now based on whatyou see in the UI it's only using theoptical system right looking down andtry officially an optical mouse lookingat the differences in compensating andit's staying really still and there'swind there's actually wind coming yousee it's tilted slightly forward if Iwalk forward and I push it a little bitso be really careful so we don'trecommend that you do this don't trythis at home do not try this at homeokay so what I'm going to do is a pullit this way you know it resist right asit wants to stay in place there eventhough we're we're in a GPS deniedenvironment so now oh yes this issomething you designed so it would workbasically indoors and warehouses isthere an optical distance from theground that needs to be it's roughly 15feet but it's so environmentallydependent that it really depends whatyou're doing if you're on a white floorwith no markings it will not work evenif it's right on top of it but if it's avery very high contrast it'll work onfurther away I mean we can I mean let'ssee if this works but if I put my handhereit's wide enough angle you needsomething big like a card a piece ofcardboard or something that's coollooks like that works let's take off thetinfoil hat and get this higher up nearokay that's good alright so this was myfirst time flying The Phantom 3 I havethe advanced model tethered to this iPadthis transmitter I'm gonna try the autotake off and press that button hereslide auto take off so it's alreadythere feels good feels good I got 15satellites now Eric the new panel 3 also2 taps into more satellites or adifferent satellite network yeah so weuse both gps and glonass which is therussian gps system so we're looking atyou know twice as many potentialsatellites to talk to which is whyposition hold is so much better on thephantom 3 this feels really stable itfeels really really stable I love that Ihave the manual controls now I'm gonnamove the gimbal down on the shoulderbuttons and pen I can see actually seeus it's fantastic goes filming this at1080 60 will perform at 24 button looksgood the light bridge also looksfantastic it feels a lot like it looks alot like the inspire 1 light bridgeimage quality right so we're getting ahigh definition video at 720p 60 comingdown to us and it's you know it'sdynamic based on your distance in termsof the bitrate coming back so we'regiving you always giving you the bestpicture that we can possibly get basedon your distance so I notice that likewith the phantom 2 when I'm flyingforward you can see the props a littlebit if I'm aiming for just in thehorizon I came down a little bit rightoh well that's responsive another reasonthat it feels so much more responsiveespecially if you if you're movinglaterally and you let go and you know toto hold position is that our esc s arenow bi-directional and they're able toactively break you know so older systemslike the ones used in the phantom 2could stop giving the motors power andthey would spin down by themselves butnow we're actually able to say pleasestop ask the motors to stop themselvesjust like on the inspire one yeahthere's not a lot of like overshootingand then compensating for it afterwardyeah they're sort of a mild glide to astop but it does stop it doesn't glidefor long a long distance let's see if Ican do a little circle around this bigstatue here I've got the Phantom 3professional in there at the same timeand I'm going to get some footage of youflying Wowthe interface also is very reminiscentof that inspired one interface a lotmore manual controls everything looksclearer yeah in fact the app is the sameapp so it's now it will feel verysimilaroh wow okay there goes don't get tooclose to the metal object and this videolooks really smooth at least relate overhere I do like that I have some controlover for example the exposure or in thego so my look over in San Franciscoright there now this is a u2 f28 lens onthisthat's right enough to eight lens do youknow what a millimeter equivalent it isit's close to a twenty it's 94 degreescompanies around that so it's wide anglewithout being so wide angle that there'sa lot of distortion I'm going to lift itup here and I can actually change theexposure value while I'm recording somerecording video so I can actuallybrighten it up on the fly I compensatehigher or if I want to do the otherdirection to show you guys watching itcome see it lower for example if I waspointing more directly at a reallybright object or with a Sun even rightdo you mind if I take it out a littleover the top here no go aheadyeah it's really really stablebeautiful San Franciscoand here we are above Treasure Islandlike the the previous phantoms is therethe altitude limit but yes by default welimit to 400 feet 120 meters so if yougo up that high you'll see it bouncedoff it's right now 80 90 meters ahundred meters and there goes warningmaximum flight altitude reach adjust insetting right I think I've turned soundoff on that but if sound was on youwould hear talking to you maybe not turnokay you're here the control I have overthe gimbal is just up and down it's justup and down that's correct okay so oneof the things that you guys launch forthe phantom 2 vision was ground controlsupport so you can do waypoints is thatsomething that's going to comeeventually to this yeah so we recentlyannounced that we will be putting groundcontrol at least in to inspire probablyinto Phantom 3 we don't have a date onthat yet so actually the announcementwas really that we would be puttingground control support in a moreexplicit way into the SDK so then anyonecould write an app using ground controlbut there's a very high likelihood itwill also end up in our app and onereason for that is that most people whoare using a ground station actually havegoals beyond just flying around for funyou know usually it's related to mappingor survey or you know some kind ofcinematography that you know where theywant to kind of simulate having adedicated pilot and operator but onlywant to operate the camera all right I'mgoing to send this one of the thingsthat we noticed with with the withphantom 2 if you descend too quickly youdon't move all the sending you can getcaught in its own like vortex thathappening with the phantom of 3 is or isthere a proper way to descend but thathappened a lot in very early firmwareversions of phantom 2 but at some pointwe limited descent rate to 2 meters asecond so just a risk feet a second oktheory you cannot enter vortex ringstate even if you're flying at altitudefor example in the in like dry heat youknow and so the the goals for us are toprevent that from happening for novicepilots this propulsion system is muchmore powerful so it should be evenharder to enter that state and that uhleft more powerful propulsion systemsthat allowed us to go faster or even westill limit at about 35 miles an hourbut it you noticed it ready it feels alot more crisp you know the performanceis much more akin to something like aninspire and inspires actually much morepowerful than this is but this feelslike something in between I don't haveyou flown both yeah I have so close andthey inspired definitely it feels like alost like when you when it's when it'sin the air when it's hovering like it'snot going to move at all I'm getting alot of sense I can I leave this righthere and I just want to get like a slopein upshot which I'll try to do goespanning up hopefully when we review thatfootage it won't look like it's movingat all of course the gimbal is going tohelp stabilize right some glad as wellwe've actually had people getsuccessfully shoot still images up toeight seconds long better sharp Wow inthe gimbal which is very strange forthose of us who are photographers onland yes you have no chance even onesecond is almost right to hold film butif you if you you know it might be a funtest for you to do at some point if yougo up and take a bunch of multi secondexposures like ten chances are one ofthem will be pretty sharp all rightthere goes I believe yeah I'm gonna comefind you I'm gonna go back that statuedo one more loop around and I thinkthat's a great first test flight withthis Eric you said this is shipping nowyes the first unit ships just a coupledays ago you know by the time people areseeing this video the iOS version andthe Android version should both be inapp stores ready to go so so it's outand that's the phantom3 both theadvanced version and the professionalhow much they cost so the phantom 3advanced is $9.99 and the phantom 3professional is 1259 they're alsobattery bundles so you can buy it with abattery to get a discounted battery justabout $100 more awesome I'm going to tryto get close to us sign off over herecheck out that image quality guysalright I'm norm from tested this isErik Cheng from DJI will be doing moreflights with quad copters hopefully thePhantom 3 soon till then we'll see younext time\n"