Garden Gnome Software

In order to maximize compatibility, I always create both HTML5 and Flash output. I've done it without questioning what specifically would be given up if my panos weren't Flash compatible. Nowadays, HTML is compatible with most everything as far as I can tell. In what situations is Flash still necessary? What are the real risks, at this point in time, of not supporting Flash output?

Depends how much backwards compatibility you need. According to my website stats, 12% of people are using IE and of those, 25% are still using IE6 (unbelievably). At an average of 1,600 page hits a day, that's still enough people for me to make it worthwhile staying with Flash as an option for the time being. YMMV

Given that it only appears that all internet content provided to internet users is HTML5, you should consider that there exists that AT LEAST there might be a few very important internet users that are reluctant to change their tried and true browsers to HTML5 compliant browsers. HTML5 is still a growing code set; HTML5 is not fully adopted by website developers and HTML5 is not yet fully approved by the WC3 commission. That is why IE 11 and Chrome are only partially HTML5 compliant browsers. OF ALL THE web browsers only maybe 10 are partially compliant.

Makes sense to me to continue to build HTML5 output with Mulitres with Flash fallback option.

Also, it's only the Flash option that allows visual transitions between different panoramas in a tour. This is not possible (yet?) in HTML5 which is why I still set Flash as the priority with HTML5 as the fallback. When it does become possible I'll change to HTML5 first.