You can figure this out yourself for any installer: use a pc that doesn't yet have the product installed, start procomon, add a filter so that includes only info from the installer process (something like command line contains vcRedist
should be sufficient) and start the installer. After it finishes, examine which registry keys it wrote.
For VS2102 the interesting stuff will be here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DevDiv\vc\Servicing\11.0
(which is by the way also answered in the question you link to)
edit in addition to the above, you could also check
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\5C4834679ACBC703A9CADF44632686A6
or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{764384C5-BCA9-307C-9AAC-FD443662686A}
(note both are for the x64 redistributable), that's how eg Installshield's prerequisites perform the check.