x-plane atc is horrible - much worse than fs2004 - it's definately an area for future improvement (x-plane updates are quite frequent within each major version, hopefully v10 might tackle this area), but you can fly on vatsim / ivao if that's your bag (not mine).
Using XPUIPC you can hook up a number of external msfs apps (I use flight sim commander for planning and moving map as well as Flight Logger v4). In addition my Vrinsight MCP panel now works with x-plane and the setup is easier in x-plane than for msfs!
Most world airports do not have buildings out of the box, and there's no plane traffic by default (there are plug-ins to give some traffic, but I don't bother with those).
The key to x-plane is downloading add-on scenery and aircraft - there are also tools for converting fs2004 scenery over to x-plane which work well in most cases.
The first time I fired up and flew with x-plane I was hit with a culture shock and saw everywhere where it didn't match up with my MSFS expectations. Recently, I flew a leg of the uk tour in MSFS and had the same feeling - spotted everything that was worse than x-plane.
The sims have different strengths and weaknesses - no reason not to fly both - but there are some great add-ons coming out in 2010 for x-plane. See the crj-200 (our business challenger 850), the 747-200, the 777. New developments:
http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?board=64.0 MSFS shines in terms of simulating the whole flying experience - atc, other aircraft etc. Whereas I find x-plane simulates the pilots experience better - although this is an initial shock from MSFS (MSFS aircraft feel like they are on rails, very very stable. x-plane bumps you around in the air much more and feels more dynamic)
I'll grab some more screenies for you, in the meantime here are some videos:
MU-2:
CRJ-200 (In development)
Seamax:
