In European drone rules there's a hard cap of 500m VLOS, so if you want to fly legal you just limit the drone to 500m and 120m altitude, and they have to believe that you were in VLOS. Altitude is from the ground, you can climb mountains, but for the general purpose 120/500 keeps you 100% legal.
Without a hard cap a dedicated spotter constantly looking at the drone, a
Mavic 3 can be seen as far as 800m or so, the problem is that when you are flying alone, and you change from looking at the drone to looking at the screen you won't be able to find the drone again in the sky.
If I'm alone, real VLOS for me is around 200m, past that I spend too much time searching the drone in the sky. When flying drones it's always better to focus on the screen unless you are flying near obstacles, interiors, close to trees or things like that, then you want the drone at a close distance, the closer, the better.
I'll keep flying long range till I can't find a way to overcome RID, then I'll just limit the drone to 500/120 and move myself closer and exploit the rules as much as I can to the point everyone around doesn't get surprised of seeing a drone flying nearby.
We'll see an exponential increase of drone confrontations during 2023 and 2024... and I'm not going to be a victim of that.
My
M3 will stay under the radar at 01.00.0800 for as long as I can till things get clearer and drone hobbyist aren't treated like criminals anymore.