A Virtual Community Building Platform Based on Google Earth

Virtual community performs more and more important role for online users. Many tools for virtual community design, implementation and management have been developed, such as virtual reality (VR). On the other hand, few popular technologies have received frequent usage because of cost and time consuming. In this study, a platform for building virtual community more easily and quickly is proposed, which is called E-Life platform (ELP) in our paper. ELP is based on Google Earth (GE) which provides high resolution global geographic information. The architecture of ELP system based on SketchUp is discussed in this paper. The detailed implementation of ELP is presented. Moreover, how to build a virtual community by using ELP is also described in this paper. Experimental results have shown the efficiency and low cost of ELP system.