A few weeks ago we posted a video by DCS player Forest Rat who recreated Top Gun aerial scenes using digital combat simulator world. Forest Rat created the scene of the very first minutes of Top Gun (when the two F-14s piloted by Mav and Goose and Cougar and Merlin are vectored by the aircraft carrier to intercept the incoming aircraft that will turn out to be MiG-28s) using the famous DCS World combat flight simulator.
Now Forest Rat has recreated the first official trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick”, the sequel of the original 1980s blockbuster that will hit theaters in June 2020
Paramount Pictures Released the First Official Trailer of Top Gun: Maverick on July 18, 2019.
Once again, some details are not exactly the same as the trailer, but the work Forest Rat has done is remarkable and shows the realism that DCS world is able to offer.
Noteworthy, the new clip is split into two parts:
- The first one shows the trailer recreated in DCS World except for the last few seconds, when the F-14 (in CGI) makes a cameo flying over snow-topped mountains
- The second one, from mark 02:27, provides a scene-for-scene comparison too. At the end of the second part you can also see the final Tomcat scene.
Here’s the Video:
According to its website, DCS offers the most authentic and realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles and ships possible.
DCS World is fundamentally a deep, authentic and realistic simulation designed also to offer a more relaxed gameplay to suit the user and his particular level of experience and training.
The ambition is to hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator of such complex weapons systems as the A-10C Warthog or the F/A-18C Hornet. The only next step is the real thing!
Recently, DCS World came out with a flyable F-14A/B Tomcat, the same aircraft that appears in the original Top Gun movie. A flyable “MiG-28” preceded the Tomcat by three years.
Obviously, the first thing you’d do with a flyable F-14 is recreate Top Gun, and that’s exactly what Forest Rat did—remarkably well.
As reported by Popular Mechanics, it helps that DCS World also models U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. (One minor quibble: the carrier in the movie is the recently decommissioned, one-of-a-kind USS Enterprise, while the carrier in the game is a Nimitz-class
carrier).
The aircraft models in DCS World look very good in the YouTube video, but they’re still clearly artificial. That being said, they hold up pretty well against real live aircraft used in Top Gun.
Carrier in Top Gun was the USS Ranger. They had the Top Gun logo painted on the hull where the forward starboard elevator lift meets the flight deck.