Flash Virtual Tours?

Realtors want their virtual tours seen by the maximum number of potential buyers without having to download a plugin for their browser. To achieve that goal they need to understand the the installed base of the various plugins used in virtual tours. The best source for this data that I know of is: Macromedia's study of plugins .

This data does not exactly match my informal sampling of our buyers and sellers that we do business with. I find that the data above overstates the Java and QuickTime installed base of our clients. However, it appears to be the best data available.

So how do you use Flash in your Virtual Tours? The only Virtual Tour provider I know of that uses Flash is TourFactory.com . To verify this click on one of their samples tours and then click on one of the tour tabs that has a dot on it (dots indicate 360 or 180 degree views). When viewing one of these wide-angle rotating views notice the small links at the bottom of the rotaing image. One of them is Flash. Clicking on one of these links changes the viewing technology. That is, if a potential buyer doesn't have Java installed they just click on Flash and still can see the view.