When I use the "Update System" feature of PackageKit it will show me the available updates when I click Review Updates. It won't however show me what it's doing when I then click Update System, although it will complete the update successfully.
The main window stays empty during the whole update process. The status bar shows "downloading", "upgrading" and "requesting data" among other things and the progress bar shows some indication of how far into the process the whole action is, but there's nowhere where I can see which package it's actually dealing with.