Dear people, especially for all the people living in mountain areas is the 500 meter limit  really too little, now you can with amenities like windsurfer antenna, s  increase significantly, which is just as prohibited as flying higher than the permitted altitude , but we do it annyway.
Nobody knows a way to get off this restriction, I recently saw something on the Internet about a man who told me that it can be don through the following:
First, go to your max altitude in GPS mode, switch to ATI mode and press "go home" and you can climb well over 500 meters?
I have tried this but had almost a fly away by the strong winds at this height without GPS, so my question is: is there anyone who knows how you can fly higher than the factory limit?
Yes i know there wil be discussions over this item and yes i know it is fobidden, but come on guys 500 meters in a mountaines area is way to low..

Your question made me think of this ongoing question from the opposite perspective.  

It's been a very long time since I flew fixed-wing planes - what are the rules for planes flying over mountains.  When a pilot is flying straight and level over land at say 1,000 feet, and begins heading towards an area with 800-foot mountains, obviously he can continue along his trajectory and not hit any mountains.  But at the mountain top, he'll only be 200 feet above the ground.  Is he required to now increase his altitude to stay 500 feet, or whatever the rules are, above the mountain tops so that we can still fly our UAV's from the top of the mountain at 400 feet, and not chance a collision?

Good point, I find it a bit hypocritical to easily brought in connection with the general flight to have lowered the limit to 500 meters instead of 800 meters to the Ph2
Why are they now produce Ph3 with a factory range of 2000 meters?
This is just as forbidden as flying higher than allowed, so come on get those limits off and let us fly at least 1000 meters? whats the use of the range of 2000 meter worth?So i like to know is there a way to go higer?

It's 500 meters above takeoff. So if you are a 1000 meters elevation on a mountain, you can fly another 500 up. You can also descend below takeoff and you won't have any issues with returning. I believe there is a 6000 meter limit on height of flight however. I may be wrong there but the other is accurate.

In Australia, the lowest altitude aircraft can fly visually over a non populated area is 500 feet above ground level. Provided you are not near an airport you should be safe flying your Phantom to 400 feet. The 500 meter limit is about 4 times higher than that 400ft limit, that's where guys get themselves into trouble causing danger to aircraft. As for the mountains, surely there is some way of making your Takeoff point the new reference. In the DJI promo videos, they hike to the top of a volcano to film the oozing magma, I'm sure that volcano was quite elevated.

It is built in for safety. You have guys flying at a 1000m and there will be collisions with aircraft, people will die and then we will not be able to fly over 50m, if at all.

Eh??   The tallest hill in the Netherlands is 320m?  Where are you flying that you can say you need to be over 500m above your takeoff point?

This is not forbidden, you just need to be in proper flight zone and have a licence (fpv flying may require licence, depending on country).
You can also get a reservation for EX zone (exercise) and this limit have totally no sense.

The most important thing is to know what you are allowed to, where, and where NOT.

The cars can get 250-300km/h and the driver is responsible to keep 50km/h in town. For 250km/h is a few places on earth (except racing tracks) to allow this speed. Some cars have 250km/h speed limit but you are able to remove it.
In most cases you have a 50 (town), 90 (normal road) and 140 (highways) (values from my country) limit, but your car is able to reach about 200-250km/h. and you will never use it, unless you go for a track (or exercise are in case of drones).

And a reservation of EX zone is not a big deal.

I have family in Poland and thats in the mountains, i experience this handicap last month, not able to fly high enoug, yes in Holland there are olmost no hils but even then i'll like to go higer some times than this limit, i like cloud flying some times the clouds are low enoug to do so

But if you set off from the top of a mountain which is say 500m your altitude will be set at zero and you would be able to climb to 1000m above sea level.

Hopefully dji will get rid of the altitude limit soon. 500m seems a bit random, I wonder where they came up with 500m anyway.

There must be a way to unlock this limit, iff you go to 500 meters the message says to chance your altitute settings in the RC, so there must be a way to do so?

I will be in Laramie, Wyoming this weekend (altitude 7165 ft./2184 m.) and I will test fly my P3p there and report back if I have any problems.

I'm back...l
I flew the P3p in Laramie and had no problem with altitude. I only went up about 100 ft. due to strong wind. But no problems.

I too wondered this. If you want to fly up the side of a mountain, you're stuck 500m up it.

Does anyone know, is it a limitation with the app or with the aircraft firmware?
If it is just with the app, then a 3rd party app will unlock it.

In the app it says chance your altitude settings in the RC, so i think its in the software of the RC, what then probably is something in the software itself from DJI
The strange thing is that it says that you can change it in the settings of the RC ?

Last week I was flying from on top of the mountain which was 3000 feet equals 900 meters, to the phantom it was 0 feet and I was able to go to 400 feet hight so that's a total of 3400 feet above sea level, I think that's more than enough to do going down hill and hug the ground level decending and capture the climb back up all the 3000 feet up the mountain, I did it so it's not a ristrtiction in my opinion you just have to be on top of the mountain and while going Down keep a relative altitude with the ground so you won't break any avaiation rules.

I was very disappointed when I notice my P3A having an altitude limit of 500m and the spec says it can reach 2km. Then what is the point of having Phantom 3 Advanced but not Standard since Standard also fly up to 500m?

The PH3 advanced has the lightbridge tech. this is far out better then the standard and worth the extra costs, but i agree that the 500 meter altitude limit is not enoug and in a way misleading, look on the internet there are ways to fly higer than the 500 meter limit its your own risck and choice.
i would advice to fly no higer then the limit set in the settings.