i don't have X-plane 9 myself unfortunatly i would say . i add to make choices and you see money doesn't grow up onto trees in my country but i don't regret my choices .
this been said i have X-plane 8 and FS9 and i enjoy X-plane much more than FS9 . what's fun with FS it's that there is a huge community where everyone creates it's own local airport for the game ; but paradoxally that's what made me slowly abandon FS9 that i enjoyed a lot at the beginning . because going to AVSIM (which is a great site) everyday with the scaring of missing THE addon became to give me headheaches and finally i decided to stop it all . i believe that very enthusiats aviation dudes could enjoy such "thing" but searching (every day) for addons , downloading them , running all the utilities to suppress the duplicate files slowly turned my pleasure into a test . and FS without addons isn't of any interest
on a pure flight level , if the planes ( v8 ) are a bit less beautiful than FS but they are much more fun to fly , FS devellopers themselves say that FS isn't a pure flight simulator . and v8 land graphics are very nice , very eye candy and seems v9 are even better
i won't spit on FS cause i remember i had very nice moments with that game like for example when i took of with my project Fokker 70 from Portugal for a flight over the Mediterranean or trying to reach the Galapagos with my Short Sunderland with an all gliding landing beacause of being out of gas , but i still prefer X-plane more realistic more fun too . i don't talk about X-plane 9 or FSX but globally