Field trips are an important component of upper undergraduate and graduate-level science courses, especially in the fields of biology, geoscience, and environmental science. Field trips can provide a new perspective to a course's content and quality. Science field trips can facilitate active student learning, yet often can be constrained by time, safety, distance, expense, and great physical exertion. For these reasons, virtual field trips (VFT) have become increasingly popular for the past decade. This paper evaluates instructor perceptions on VFT as part of their teaching tools, and discusses the benefits and drawbacks of using VFT from the perspectives of college science instructors.