The flight simulator X-Plane is generally acknowledged to be among the best on either a Mac or a PC. Surprisingly, X-Plane [App Store link] made it to the iPhone as one of the first apps available.

That was quite an accomplishment, and while the iPhone version is not as sophisticated as its big brother, it has a lot of the accurate flight physics bundled in to give you a pretty compelling flight simulator experience on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Now, Laminar Research has done it again, bringing a simulation of Chesley Sullenberger's January 15th USAirways landing in the Hudson River saving all the passengers and crews from what could have been a very deadly accident.

You can relive the experience with Sully's Flight [App Store link, U.S. $0.99] and you don't have to even have X-Plane installed to run it.

You start out on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport, in similar weather conditions to the real event. You take off, and to follow the original flight path, there are rectangular hoops displayed for you to fly through. To make the sim even more realistic, you get the actual air traffic communication with the stricken airliner. It gives you an appreciation for just how cool Sullenberger was that day, matter-of-factly telling air traffic control he wouldn't be trying to make a landing at another airport, but was going to land in the Hudson River instead.

I've tried the sim a few times, and pretty consistently I land too fast... I need more work on flaps and the aircraft speed when I get closer to the water.

Normally, I might say a game like this is in questionable taste, but it is more a simulation than a game, and, of course, no one was seriously hurt in real life. It would be good to know something about flying before trying this app, because with no engines the plane goes down pretty rapidly. The average person trying it won't be able to escape the physics of the simulation, so if you're looking for a full flight sim, this is not for you.

Like all X-Plane products, there will likely be some updates, but I did not see any bugs when running the sim. And remember, Sully's Flight is not a standard flying game. No matter what you do, you will hit the birds, and your engine will fail, so don't plan on just flying around Manhattan.

Version 9.06 of X-Plane 9 has been released from Laminar Research, and if you haven't updated your iPhone or iPod touch with the new edition, you'll want to do that as soon as possible.

X-Plane has been updated for free over the last few versions with the most-requested features that users asked for:

• More flying regions and airports; the initial release had only the area around Innsbruck, Austria. Now you can fly around Southern California, Hawaii, and San Francisco as well.
• More airplanes. The Piper Malibu single and Beech King-Air twin have been added to the X-Plane 9 fleet.
• EFIS (Electronic Flight Instrument System). For budding or real pilots, having a real "glass cockpit" adds to the realism of X-Plane 9. According to Laminar Research, pilots are actually beginning to use X-Plane 9 Airliner (a sister product) for practice prior to simulator check flights!
• A much improved flight model. This makes the handling characteristics of each aircraft type much closer to the real thing.
• A pause button so you can actually get back to reality on occasion, then return to a flight in progress.
• Better animation frame rate for more realism.

The app is still US$9.99 and is available in the App Store (click opens iTunes).

Flight simulator applications are not only great entertainment, but a good way for would-be pilots to hone their skills without burning fuel or booking time in a "real" flight simulator. X-Plane 9 from Laminar Research is currently the most impressive flight simulator for Mac, with hundreds of different types of planes, thousands of airports, and very realistic weather.

Laminar Research recently ported X-Plane 9 to the iPhone and iPod touch (click opens iTunes). While it doesn't have the extensive feature set of the Mac version, X-Plane 9 for iPhone and iPod touch is an impressive effort that shows off the sheer power of the iPhone and iPod touch both computationally and graphically.

The app is a slender 7 MB and as you'd guess, you're giving up a bit of the Mac version's capabilities with the iPhone port. Instead of the entire world, you now have a 1,600 square mile area centered near Innsbruck, Austria to fly around in. There's only one airport, four aircraft types, less accuracy in terms of the flight models, no cities to fly over, and no navigation aids such as VORs. Is X-Plane 9 still a worthy iPhone app? Read on...