Become Maverick in Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Top Gun expansion

Image: Microsoft / YouTube

Just the name alone should give you goosebumps: Microsoft has a free Top Gun: Maverick expansion for Flight Simulator, and it’s available now.

Microsoft released a trailer of the new expansion on Wednesday, which starts kicking in the 80’s nostalgia as soon as the opening bars of the original Top Gun theme begin to play. (Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t licensed Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” for the trailer,” but Spotify is just a click or two away.)

Microsoft doesn’t say anything about what you can or can’t do as far as the expansion is concerned, but we can assume the plane you’ll fly is an F-18 Super Hornet, based upon what we know about the movie itself. (Sorry, we can’t confirm whether or not the plane in the trailer is an F-18 or not.) What we can say is that there’s an aircraft carrier that it appears that you can land and take off from…and at the very end, is that a shot in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird from space?

Microsoft / YouTube

Remember, Flight Simulator is part of Microsoft’s killer Xbox Game Pass subscription, which can be picked up for cheap if you follow our advice. The new expansion is available for all of the platforms that Flight Simulator runs on, though, including the PC, Xbox, and Steam. Remember, Flight Simulator‘s file siz is huuuuuuuuge, which is why that’s its fantastic that it’s also available to play via Xbox cloud streaming.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that you’ll be able to engage other pilots with air-to-air missiles or guns. And that, naturally, suggests another question: Does Microsoft have a military combat simulator in the works? It certainly has all the pieces in place, including one of the legendary combat aircraft of the U.S. military.

We’ve embedded the trailer below.

Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor

As PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.

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