Robert McDonald

Wow- this is incredible. The member who analogized the car-buying purchase was spot-on. There is the pretty new Corvette convertible for $80,000 USD sitting in the showroom. What else can we do but go home and throw rocks at the old sled in our driveway? We can 'rationalize' all we want. There simply put is no substitute for the 'Vette. We can cry about insurance premiums, fuel economy, the monthly payment, yada yada. But in our hearts we know which car we yearn for... Of course there will ALWAYS be Prius drivers... As an aside, I am not the least bit worried about PMDG pricing. I feel confident it will be reasonable. For those who can't wait on PMDG, the iFly 737NG works right now in P3D v 2.2. (iFly released a special P3D version, which is extra-cost even if you own the FSX version. Side note: The exterior views of the iFly have TERRIFIC engine sounds - best I've ever heard on a sim platform with the exception of special $10k USD cockpit audio software). If you are a cockpit builder, Sim-Avionics has a default 737 model for FSX/P3D that works fine with the S-A glass cockpit software. The Sim-A 737 is 'included' with the Sim-A software purchase. BTW: The iFly 737NG for P3D v 2.2. is not insanely priced, I want to say about $80 USD.

P3D v 2.2 is a HUGE improvement over FSX, period. It is under active development, FSX development has ceased except by third parties building add-ons for it. P3D has a beautiful future and is drop-dead beautiful to fly in, especially with a couple of add-ons from Orbx (FTX Global, NorCal, PNW, to name a few). Lockheed has further stated that 64-bits is somewhere in the future of P3D, along with things like SLI. P3D supports Direct X 11, FSX never heard of it. So you will see continued evolution of P3D, and Lockheed-Martin has the resources (financial and human) to make P3D better and better over time. IOW, it continues to morph and grow, and issues that exist today _WILL_ be addressed, apparently in fairly short order. P3D defines excitement and holds a world of promise. FSX is the grand old lady of simulation, and several generations removed from P3D.

Hi all, Well, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who ran into a wall, and Rob again has done justice to tempering our 'expectations' to the 'realities' of REAL TIME RENDERING. People thought I was insane to spread the work across 3 pc's and 3 GPUs, but I know from my X-Plane days this is a great way to uptick performance and smoothness. Sure, SLI would be a similar way to approach things, up till now, there hasn't been SLI in ANY of the 'big 3' sim platforms. Rob is quite right about the 'server farms' - I've seen the ones at Pixar, and a relative used to be on staff there... it would take HOURS to render a frame... and they have many many pc's in an array to build their fabulous animations. Of course this simply adds to our subliminal 'desires' and 'expectations' and we need people like Rob to bring us down to earth. We all have the secret wish that our sims would rival the CGI motion-picture graphics we all enjoy in today's modern cinema! I am guilty as charged. Rob is right, that is NOT happening! The more eye candy and complexity... well, it doesn't take a quantum physics professor to predict what will happen to frames --- they TANK. We are like a crowd of spoiled children. Once we were happy playing PONG on a black-and-white screen. Then Asteroids, Space-Invaders, Donkey Kong, and here we are sitting on our flight deck. We all know what we WANT. And we all keep trying to build it. More add-ons, more hardware, real time ATC... sound effects, stick shakers, high-end seats...sigh... Then the stuttering, and the break-apart on the multi-player monitor array... and ultimately heading back out the door for an alternative platform until P3D 'shakes out'. REX has made a lot of noise talking about their upcoming Weather Direct 4 platform, and I have some high hopes for that. But complex weather, hang-on high-detail airports, ground vehicles, runway textures, complex aircraft... the more you pile on... it's the law of inverse returns in frames... and eventually it becomes what one poster termed "a deal breaker", or put another way, unreasonable and unrealistic. Then you are faced with trying to dumb things down to get back to how it ran before you piled all the garbage on it. FSX on steroids. P3D can do a LOT more than FSX. But like all the sims - there are bottlenecks - be it CPU/GPU/VRAM or whatever. And those bottlenecks? NOT GREAT! I can live without the ground shadows from the clouds. Sure, they look nice, but they start to impact the performance, and I'm less enthusiastic. Not knocking P3D in any way - I still feel it holds TREMENDOUS promise, and likely once everyone figures out what works and what doesn't - we can settle down and enjoy basic flight! Thanks again for grounding our expectations Rob well-reasoned and perfectly postulated. I am reminded of the old saying "how many whiskers make a beard?" Another way of saying this, is at what point does the massive investiture in hardware outweigh the benefits of the simulation itself? Occulus Rift holds some promise - but as Rob says, the shooter games have much narrower fields of vision and other restrictions that would not work well in airplane sims where you're looking 360 degrees out to the horizon. Speaking for myself, $6000 for two video cards? Not anytime soon folks. That's just crazy - I'd rather pay that to fly RW PPL aircraft. I had hopes that Microsoft's SERVER FARM could do for us what we couldn't do ourselves - give us BEAUCOUP rendering power without massive out-of-pocket expense. That was the hope for MS Flight. Sadly, it didn't work the way we imagined. So we continue to 'wait'... and dream...

thanks for clarifying. Sadly, I am foregoing WidevieW in lieu of P3D MultiPlayer. For my money Multiplayer, though NOT perfect, is far superior to W.V. Don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but it was simply not working for me, not even a little bit. STUTTERS and worse. Far far far out of sync. Thank you for trying to help me.

2nd that emoticon! Downloaded from FlightBeam Studios and FSDreamteam, all installed into 2.2 with no issues.

Yes, what I did was I copied the relevant XML code from the DLL in the dummy P3Dv1 folder and pasted them into the DLL.XML file in P3D v2, and that makes Wideview appear in the add-ons menu in P3D v. 2.2. That's the good news. THE BAD NEWS is that I'm having the devil of the time configuring the triple screens on triple PCs. LAG is a polite word. HORRIBLE LAG would be a better one. I dumped $40 for this thinking it would work better than Multi-Player in P3D v2. Not!!! Although there is some break apart of the views in Multi-Player (built in to P3D v2), the Wideview is just terrible. Could you share a screen shot of your wideview configuration settings, please, Artem? Thank you. Are you referring to P3D Multi-Player or to WideView? Thanks for this- I did purchase the iFly NG for P3D and have it working. Right now the triple-view issue may prove a deal-breaker. If I cant get smooth graphics on 3 pcs I am not going to be happy with an otherwise GREAT simulation platform. I'm honestly stunned that this issue even exists, as everything ELSE in P3D v 2.2 is the BEST. Got Wideview working, HUGE disappointment - horrid lag - and not a 'little bit' but severe lag. Entire view loses sync almost every moment.

Hi Artem, thanks for your response. I created an extra folder in AppData/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3D as you suggested. Now just so I'm clear, I use the EMT to install WideView into P3D v2 yes? And it will save the settings in the 'wrong' folder (P3D) instead of P3D v2 Folder? Or do I need to do that somehow? Thank you!

Center- i7 4.73 GHZ GTX Titan 6GB VRAM Wings i5 3.5 GHZ GTX 770 OC 4GB VRAM Gigabit network. No latency. In XPlane 10 get killer frames no lag on 3 screens of any kind. Multi-Channel is needed, sad that LM pulled it, very sad. The "MULTIPLAYER" isn't ideal. WideView I cannot seem to make work (I think it's simply too long since they updated it) in P3D v 2.2.

If LM comes with 64-bit version of P3D - they will own the skies. That will obviate the VAS issue for once and for all, and then all the development can go nuts. But even as-is, it's drop-dead beautiful. When REX Weather Direct 4 comes out, that should be astounding as well, I hear no more 'popping' of clouds as weather changes. It is supposed to be 'seamless' - and if that's true, boy howdy! Their Direct Texture 4 package adds quite a bit to the airport runways and lighting. The weather product is in beta and projected for about 30 days out for release, unofficial and strictly hush-hush. Right now I'm looking for a 737 so I can fly my glass cockpit in P3D. Also, I'm struggling trying to get a decent sync between 3 monitors and 3 pcs. I have it working, but any kind of serious change in pitch, the horizon breaks apart across the 180 degrees FOV. I keep thinking there must be something I'm missing. Yes, I know I could run 3 monitors off the back of my GTX Titan on the center PC, but I prefer to divvy up the eye candy tasks to free the PC(s) to do the REST of the sim work. Example of the issue is here: Especially at about 1:17 look at the horizon break apart due to pitch. Be sure to select 1080p on the YouTube viewer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XVJaYnq4fM&list=UUmq9-ISD8eVk1Zc0nbwTLmQ

heh. Thanks Jimmy. And it can only be better and better. I enjoy both platforms, but clearly LM is putting the heat on in terms of "as real as it ever has gotten"

P3D v 2.2. is stunning. Flew VFR over Hoover dam - and then over the Vegas strip- saw the dancing fountains fully animated from the AIR! WOW!! Have Orbx FTX Global and Orbx vector 1.1 along with PNW and NorCal. Have Rex Direct Texture 4, and waiting on Rex Direct Weather 4 which is coming soon. Debt of gratitude to Rob Ainscough for his hard work testing P3D. It's really FS XI in my book. VERY pretty. Nice flight dynamics too. I have Skymaxx on XP10. It's nice, but overall the experience on P3D is what's happening now, IMHO. Great job by LM.

Hey Rob- I went ahead and got P3D and sprang for ORBX Vectors and the other stuff. Gotta try to get that effect you showed off so nicely in your video. Forget these guys... you did a great job with that vid! By sharing your settings, you make the setup task much simpler! I'm willing to try P3D v 2.1 (and waiting on 2.2 which I gather from your comments should be out in the near future...) Thanks again. Good job!

... sigh ...

Yes, the 64-bit solution is really what is needed. Until LM does that (and let's face it, that's a MONSTEROUS task) the VAS issue is not going away, but will result in a lot of jiggling around to 'deal with it' and STILL make everything else function as well as possible. I got tired of bumping my head on the 32-bit ceiling, and that was what drove me back to Xplane. I must say in honesty the XPlane demo (which runs on a timer) is a true PITA. To really give XPlane a fair chance, it requires actually buying it, so you then have time to play around with everything and get ready to fly it. Even with its warts and blisters, XP runs great in 64 bits, and now the developers have by and large embraced 64 bits as the defacto standard. So much so the 777 in XPlane is now only releasing in 64-bits (when it first came out it could run 32 or 64). Laminar showed foresight and courage by facing up to 64 bits and 'making it happen'. The good news for Laminar is the really god-awful hard part (64-bits) is over, so now the 3rd party devs can build their products with 64-bits and all that headroom in mind. Then, the OTHER shoe drops, at Laminar, which is that VRAM (on the VIDEO CARD) becomes the issue. I have video cards with 4GB and 6GB of VRAM just for graphics! I remember when that was considered a TON of memory for the entire COMPUTER. Much like FSX, XPlane requires building up your sim, with better airplanes / airport /scenery / and payware FMC. The built-in FMC for XPlane, politely, is not the best. The aftermarket offering is light years better. Same with the airplanes. There is a WEALTH of free stuff out there for xPlane as well. For the Jet crowd the payware 777 is worth buying, not quite PMDG, but the closest thing I've found. The chief difference though, in XPlane vs. FSX/3PD is scalability. When you want to spread the view across 3 monitors - and 3 (or more pcs), this is EASILY done in XPlane, and it LOOKS right (not distorted). Trying to spread the view across 3 monitors and use only 1 PC and video card? That's simply never going to be as viable, because the video card has to work 3x harder all at the same moment, rendering three different angles of view 30 or more times PER SECOND. Can it be done? Yes. Are the frame rates great when you do that? Not so much. So many FSX/3PD pilots are 'stuck' with single monitor view. That's not 'bad' but what a difference it makes to be able to see around the corners on taxi or turning on visual approaches. It's incredible that people like Rob go to the trouble and bother to SHARE THEIR HARD WORK with all of us. When I flew FSX, I spent hours and hours trying to make the perfect cake (get things in perfect balance). The OOM/VAS problem is so severe that it has created a cottage industry. That is in the final analysis what shoved me permanently over to the dark side. I was STUNNED to learn that Darth Vader was my uncle!

And try a memorable name change, something like "Wolf Blitzer" to go with your goatee. CNN is hiring retirees part time to cover the Malaysia 370 aftermath. When that story is finally beaten to death, they will go back to Governor Christie causing an unheard-of traffic jam in New Jersey. It's gotten so bad we put collegiate wrestling on at work in lieu of CNN. Seriously, I am in a similar quandry as the age when I -can- retire has passed, and now I'm working the system one more year to retire at full SS income with no takeback if I elect to work part-time. Sadly, SS income is TAXABLE, which I do NOT agree with. I think if a soul has worked their entire life and reached a certain age, the tax bus needs to give those folks a pass. As they say in England, not bloody likely! My brother in law retired early after being in too many automobile accidents, he simply couldn't take the commute any more. I get that. He is struggling to stay busy in retirement. The change, removing the 'stress' of working every day has a good and BAD side. All the free time means you have to work at keeping busy. Much as I love golf and flight simming, it is a challenge to think of how many rounds I could play a week, and how many flights I could log. My dream job? Work at Laminar. Or Boeing. I'd like to be involved with flight in some way, and i'm too old and fat to do any REAL job! Maybe a SIM JOB!? I want to be the guy on the jungle cruise at Disneyland blasting the dreaded hippopotamus! Seriously, it takes planning to retire, as it is a huge change from the routine of 'having somewhere to go' 5 (or more) days a week. If you have a spouse or 'significant other' and that person continues to work while you are retired, that can cause problems in the relationship (resentment that you are not working while they still are), and if you are BOTH retired, that can cause other issues as you now have that person around 24x7. Some relationships don't fare well after that while others are ok. The takeaway thought is retirement is a monster and it doesn't hurt to lay out goals and plans prior to pulling the plug. One last thought. DO NOT BUY A HUGE MOTORHOME. The depreciation on those is insane. The money they cost (just the money they shed after you buy them) would easily pay for first-class air and hotels anywhere you want to go for many trips! Then, try filling one up at $4 a gallon. That WILL immediately get your attention! Like an in-ground home swimming pool, the 'idea' seems cool, but the REALITY is a major pain in the butt. And then there's parking and storage when you're not out enjoying 2 miles a gallon EPA estimated fuel economy, or cleaning out the septic tank after that first magical road trip! I work with the public, and a number of older Americans have shared one mantra with me: work as long as you can. What is retirement but permanent vacation?

Applause! Applause!

Rob! Great job! Your hard work and diligent testing is of great benefit to those of us who are engaged in constant battle with memory overhead and frames rate, though I understand right now you are working on the OOM issue (VAS) and the 32-bit glass ceiling of 4.x GB max ram. It is somewhat scary that those issues persist, even in the "new" P3D (v 2.x), but clearly you are up to the challenge and I admire you and applaud your effort. No, I'm not trying to convert anyone else to "the other" sim. As I said in Latin, 'to each his own', and I wouldn't dream of trying to persuade another pilot to move away from FSX or P3D. I freely admit that both FSX -and- P3D can produce some stunning visuals, and for those that don't mind getting under the hood from time to time, can be fine-tuned (largely through the efforts of people such as Word Not Allowed and yourself) to run quite nicely. Still others purchase machines from vendors that are pre-tuned from the factory to run FSX, another great way to go. The real rub is the wrench-turning. Since getting XPX up and running, I spend virtually no time under the hood, although I do play with the anti-aliasing from time to time just to see what effect it has on frames. In XPX, the high-definition rendering (HDR) combined with high anti-aliasing runs butter smooth, but can take a hit when heavy clouds are present. I guess this is because apparently XPX (like its brethren) can't distinguish between a puffy cloud and a building with a lot of straight edges, and goes crazy trying to anti-alias an object (cloud) that does not NEED anti-aliasing at all. So that might be something the SkyMaxx developer could address, I don't know. Truth be told, my setup is extremely complex, in terms of hang-on glass cockpit software and associated CDU/MCP/Radio Stack hardware, and it all works and plays quite well, no crashes, the caveat is some of the high-ortho graphic FSX converted scenery (think San Diego Downtown Buildings) which can run 1.5 GB of VRAM -just for that scenery- can cause an issue. I'm not shook up about that, because it is a conversion of FSX scenery over to X-Plane. At any rate cheers and applause to you Rob, the community is fortunate to have you in the lab helping P3D v2 'be all it can be'.

Well, it's there, but honestly speaking, it's asking a TON for ONE PC to run the sim, all the add-ons, and then drive 3 monitors all at high frames rate. You need to understand that the challenges of doing this all in real time across three 27" monitors is something a SINGLE pc is simply not goinig to do well. I finally went 3 PCs, with 3 high-end graphics cards. Frames and graphics are astounding. But this is not for the faint of heart, you also need a high speed gigabit network, and for god's sake, shut off your anti-virus during flight! Products that run computer cleanup tasks "in the background" can SLAY performance - and frames! Think Norton 360! Silent mode helps, but there are other ways you can dumb down Norton during flight. Yes, it would be, it's something we'd all enjoy. Ditto. This is all too true. I think the 3rd parties are sitting on their hands because XPlane is still 'a moving floor' meaning it's constantly evolving and morphing. P3D is doing the same thing. FSX is 'static' in terms of its 'basic code' (the underlying sim). This makes things considerably easier for a company like ORBX. The trouble is, if they develop scenery for XPlane 'as it is now' and then Laminar radically alters the scenery planning (and you know this is coming sooner or later), then the software peeps at ORBX (and other 3pds) have to get busy to handle the changes, all the while trying to make their stuff backwards-compatible with earlier iterations of XPlane. OTOH, once the scenery code is stabilized, this invites the 'big boys' to play in our sandbox. We would all love to have 'lego airports' at those fields we occasionally (or seldom) fly into. Lets be candid. The 'default' FSX airports? Meh. Better than nothing, but that's about it. Real pilots are like, yeah, the buildings, but they're a lot more interested in the flying (airtime). We who are hobbyists want our model railroad set to resemble Marklin HO on steroids... IOW, our shared dream of CGI motion-picture feature-film quality graphics in real time. Of course companies like Pixar do that with RENDER FARMS, not with solo pcs. Also, it can take several hours to render 1 frame of film. Not exactly the same as 60 frames per second. I'm flying into Las Vegas at 16000 feet, frames on the wings are as high as 160 per second. Twilight light clouds and hd textures. That ain't bad. Yes, it'd be 'keen' if they added all manner of things to Xplane. But honestly, if they never added one more thing, it's still my idea of a real pretty sim. Toss in PilotEdge ATC - and some cool hardware, and you can be really happy...

Hi Rob- You're right, the combo of FRAPS and YouTube is the 'double-whammy' in terms of stuttering. What looks butter smooth when in flight can look herky-jerky by the time Fraps and YouTube have had their way. I have switched over to filming with my cell phone instead of Fraps. At least people can see in 1080p what I'm seeing. And I never ever let YouTube improve my video with their anti-shake thing. That fuzzes up the picture and reduces clarity. Any way, your video looks GREAT to me - and congratulations on making P3Dv2 beta looks so incredibly appealing to us X-plane pilots! (drool!) I have to say though, I'm happy in the Laminar camp. As they say in Latin "Suum cuique" (To each his own!)

Congratulations Stan! Wow, I'm sure you're thrilled with your new baby! I want to share with you 'builders' a great color balancing tool I discovered called Xrite ColorMunki. This unit measures ambient light (and Stan, if you're a single-monitor person, you can leave the ColorMunki connected to auto-adjust your colors and brightness/contrast ON THE FLY! The software is simple to download from the Xrite website (ColorMunki DISPLAY is the program you want). Fire up the program and plug your ColorMunki analyzer into an empty USB port. Device is recognized. Step 1 - CM (ColorMunki) reads ambient light on your work surface. Step 2 - Rotate the light diffuser from the top of the CM to the bottom of it, exposing the 'electronic eye'. Step 3- Use the included counterweight (adjustable) and hang your color munki over your monitor [for best results tip your monitor back a tad so the CM won't move around. Step 4- Click Next to begin calibration of your display. Step 5 - sit back and wait about 5 minutes. You'll see a huge difference in your color settings. Everything will display as intended (bonus - a treat if you do photographic work because now what you see on screen is what will output to your printed photos). ColorMunki can handle LED monitors, Laptops, and even projection screens. Requires Free CM software. Download software and drivers (unified package) from xrite.com. Ideal for those with 'more than 1 monitor'. You could go blind trying to get the colors across 3 different screens to match. Give each one 5 mins with CM. Done! Got mine from the Jungle River website...and works great on IPS or traditional LED monitors. If you suffer from color blindness (red/green is most common in men) - then ColorMunki is a Godsend. I have the problem with Red/Green. So now I'm seeing the scenery the way it was designed... and it even got rid of the white glowing edge at the bottom of the monitor!!! Was completely automatic across 5 of 6 monitors. One monitor I had to follow their on-screen arrows to adjust brightness. all others fully automatic - that is killer!

Howdy Rob! Another killer video - and nice job of showing off the latest beta of P3D v2! Very pretty, and makes me have sim envy for your setup! I am hugely missing Orbx (I live in X-Plane 10 now) - you did a great job on setting up your sim and the filming! Kudos!

No, if you look at my videos, you'll see I don't have a 'full size' sim. I -do- have a wider-than-normal desk, it's an "L-shaped" deal with triple monitors. I like your idea of the large screen, that sounds ideal for you. I just had a lot of trouble 'seeing around the corner' with only 1 monitor. Some guys use track IR to solve that. Me? I got seasick. So I 'had no choice' but to figure out the 3 screen solution. And yes, I have more than 3 screens. 6 if you count the Android Tablet. That's a lot of electronics. I flew a lot of hours on one monitor, this is a recent change. To each their own! Best of luck! .

Having spent time in a buddy's real world full-size 737 sim, I can tell you that you'd need 5 screens to do it properly, but just like in the real airplane, the view out each window is wider than it is 'high'. With a 180 degree field of view (undistorted), you enjoy a feeling of really flying, especially if you darken the room. But to each their own. I didn't start off this way, it sort of 'grew' on me. A lot of time spent trying to make FSX do what I am doing now with X-Plane. Took a differently engineered sim and some additional expenditures for supplemental pcs / vid cards / beefier Power Supplies and a Glass Cockpit software package. The good news? You can have a killer sim for a lot less dinero than a full-size in-your-face full-scale Boeing cockpit. Is the Boeing cockpit more fun? For $160 to $200k, it SHOULD be. It takes a LOT of time, blood sweat and tears to obtain all the pieces to make the real deal, then wire it up and make it all work. My buddy took like 18 years. Me? This is about 24 months after I began. I have a ways to go though. Waiting on the Boeing yoke and TQ. Then the radio stack and full-scale overhead.

Hello all! Well, you all are bumping up into the issue that pushed me into 3PCs with 3 video cards running X-Plane 10. With no wish to hijack a thread, and no need to preach to the FSX faithful, I post this only so the technically-minded can see the 'difference' when a sim is designed to split the image and to render 180-degree field of view. I had some special lighting effects on the video which impact the colours across the 3 monitors and I filmed at a side-angle, which exacerbated the problem, but you can clearly see the great impact and high frames rates. Howard is right, when you are rendering external views only and not burdened with the cockpit, you can enjoy undistorted views (as shown in video). Trying to make just ONE PC render across 3 screens and "twist" the graphics just slaughters frame rates, as well as results in a 'squashing' effect which means the side views don't line up properly. In my setup each screen is 60 degrees different from it's neighbor... -60 on the left 0 in the center +60 on the right. Each monitor has its own PC and own Graphics card. Runs across gigabit network. Center PC runs Xplane and the two side monitors are slaves for views. Weather (clouds) via SkyMaxx add on carries across all 3 monitors as well. XPlane is scalable, and rewards multiple PCs with higher end graphics cards. That's something FSX just doesn't do as well. 64-bits in X-Plane is another topic, but all by itself is NOT enough reason to switch over from FSX or P3D. However, when you start to 'build up' you sim more and more, the flexibility of X-Plane does help. Plenty of room for X-Plane to improve, but for my purposes, it kills. Yes, it has weaknesses, and I dearly wish PMDG and ORBX would migrate to XPlane. Yes, it lacks the "LegoLand default airports" of FSX, and yes, there are issues about seasons and views to the horizon at high (JET) altitudes. I admit all of that. Still, I am completely satisfied with the setup I fly now. And I can wait for progress to bring XP up to full speed. I did order a ColorMunki to calibrate the color and brightness/contrast across the 3 displays. It's not here yet. It really is challenging trying to color balance 3 different displays. When you are buying the "happy meal" 27-inch non-IPS from HP, it's an issue. Nowadays, you can get IPS monitors which look great from a much wider viewing angle. The HPs are fine when you are sitting #1 or #2 in the cockpit. 2nd video is a nighttime triple-screen Visual approach runway 28L at KSFO. Very pretty lights bouncing off the water...Not the prettiest flying trying to hold the camera phone in one hand and then run everything else with my other hand. But you can get an idea of what's "possible". Please click the GEAR icon in the lower right corner of the YouTube Player and select 1080p High-Definition video for highest quality viewing. and here is the NIGHT video from San Francisco:

You seem to know what your goals are - and I think you'll be reasonably happy with this at the price you got it for. Best of luck!