Any difference between buying a key and activating/expanding demo vs getting fresh install of full sim?

Question

I did this - downloaded the demo and checked it worked for a day or two, then paid and got a key. I inserted it into the demo, activated it , then downloaded all default scenery in 2 long sessions. It works very well except for refusing to download one tile (+50+000 to +50 +009) so I wonder -

Should I have deleted the demo and downloaded the full thing from scratch ?

Can I do that now but keep a backup of the existing scenery and point it to that rather than re-uploading all of it? - this is the most important question.

How big is the base program minus scenery?

Should I have just renamed "X=Plane 10 Demo" and remove the word "Demo"

(There was nothing to stop me expanding the demo and I thought it would rename into the full prog after. Not knowing how big the base prog is made me try to avoid re-downloading all that anyway. I tried the rename - made no difference. One thing did make a difference to all problems except getting the missing scenery - I admit I didn't put X-Plane in the desktop but once I read how it needs to be there I moved it (I have avoided putting things there - used to be bad practice to just bung things there and clutter it up).

I expect many other people used the demo - buy key - expand with download route so this may be useful to a wider audience. Despite my problems this is still an outstanding sim - better than any other I have seen in 35 years of them!

Answer 1

We're so glad you are enjoying the sim!

We do generally reccommend that you uninstall the demo before installing the full sim. It can help avoid confusion. Having both of them installed should not cause any problems.

So, for your situation described here, you can keep your demo install as a back up if you'd like. You can install the sim again by selecting "Install a second copy" from the opening screen of the installer program. I would recommend you use the "Select None" button to clear all scenery selected in the installer, then select only the scenery tiles for the continent where you are missing one tile. The full scenery install is nearly 60 GB and it can take an extremely long time to download all of it.

Then you can copy the rest of the scenery that you already have installed in your "demo" copy to your new installation. That will be quicker than re-downloading all the scenery from the X-Plane servers.