The hardware is also slightly different, involving a pounds 12,000 video and photo-CD player with up to 600 static shots of the proposed development.Again, the remote operator can stop and branch into areas of special interest. And if viewers want to see the real thing, they can walk next door, where the Helicon is being built over a Marks & Spencer store.Meanwhile, next to St Paul's Cathedral, Robert Game of the developer MEPC is setting up a show that draws even more heavily on computerised imagery to demonstrate the nearby Petershill office complex. This merging of video and virtual reality is designed to make viewers gasp.Video clips, virtual graphics and statistics are manipulated from a remote control. The computer contains a large hard disk developed from the technology used to send video-on-demand services down phone lines."I can watch the audience and freeze the picture when someone asks a question - or appears to be going to sleep," he says.Multiple "buttons" on the screen open specialised areas of information in pictures, video clips or virtual images Another "button" moves into detailed technical analysis. The show, which can be tailored to a few minutes or more than an hour, was developed by the designers Sutton Young and cost close to pounds 100,000 - about a quarter of that going on the virtual fly-through.But this outlay has to be set against the alternative of an audio-visual display (pounds 50,000), a full brochure (pounds 40,000) or a technical pack (pounds 10,000) Hargreaves believes he is saving money.

Suddenly they dive to weave through the corridors and malls of the Helicon, a futuristic glass City complex. Tough times and a bad case of the British disease have changed all that, however. "British tenants like to walk around finished buildings before making a decision," says Charles Stevens of property consultants Allsop & Co. Computers can now hurry things along.Colin Hargreaves, of property consultants Healey & Baker, is manipulating a remote control A gaggle of suits ride a jet high above the City of London. Any architect worth his or her salt can fire up a computer and construct imaginary buildings during the lunch break.

Moving around them is a little more difficult - and expensive. But this is becoming increasingly common as a way of selling schemes Developers once had little time for such whizzery A model and glossy brochures were enough. We need to create distribution all over the world, so we have a huge task ahead of us."A huge task, indeed, but if anybody can do it, that person is surely Jean-Louis Gassee Let it Be.. Hopefully, in the next couple of months we should reach a decision."As to the future of Be, Gassee is cautious "We still have a lot to prove," he admits. "We need to deliver applications next year, to develop more hardware, with more audio and video features. "Right now we are serving the true geeks from Paris," he says. "At MacWorld ,we met a number of people interested in distributing and supporting the product in the UK.