An entertainment system includes a user interactive device having an identification assembly configured to generate a pattern of light via reflective material, a camera configured to capture the pattern of light generated by the reflective material, and a controller having processing circuitry and a memory. The memory stores machine-readable instructions configured to cause the processing circuitry to receive an indication of the pattern of light and determine identification data associated with the user interactive device based on the pattern of light.

Systems and methods for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device are disclosed. According to at least one embodiment, a method for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device includes: determining a presence of a person located in a physical environment; and in response to determining the presence of the person, facilitating control of the performance of the digital character depicted at the display device by a human operator, by an artificial intelligence (AI) game-engine, or by a combination thereof.

A method to identify positions of fingers of a hand is described. The method includes capturing images of a first hand using a plurality of cameras that are part of a wearable device. The wearable device is attached to a wrist of a second hand and the plurality of cameras of the wearable device is disposed around the wearable device. The method includes repeating capturing of additional images of the first hand, the images and the additional images captured to produce a stream of captured image data during a session of presenting the virtual environment in a head mounted display (HMD). The method includes sending the stream of captured image data to a computing device that is interfaced with the HMD. The computing device is configured to process the captured image data to identify changes in positions of the fingers of the first hand.

By using the user head and/or eye tracking capabilities of an extended reality (XR) system, a region of gaze (ROG) of the user towards the virtual screen can be determined and signaled to non-XR games and applications running on the host system connected to the XR system. The existing non-XR games/applications can be patched, upgraded, or remastered to support the application of the ROG and ROG based enhancements of the visuals and user interfaces, using the provided by the system software on the host system that is rendering the game for the XR system.

A method and system for providing gaze-based generation of virtual effects indicators correlated with directional sounds is disclosed. Gaze data is tracked via a camera associated with a client device to identify a point of focus within a three-dimensional virtual environment towards which one or both eyes of the player are focused. When the point of focus indicated by the gaze data when the point of focus does not move towards the source location within the three-dimensional virtual environment when the directional sound is received indicates that a virtual effect indicator associated with the directional sound type of the indicated directional sound is should be generated.

Methods and systems are provided for providing navigation assistance using eye gaze of a user. An example method provides assistive navigation in a video game. The method includes receiving input from a user device during a gameplay session of the video game. The method further includes capturing eye gaze of the user during the gameplay to identify a region of a scene of the video game associated with said eye gaze. Then, activating gaze navigation to move a focus of the scene to the region identified using the captured eye gaze. The gaze navigation is triggered automatically without said input from the user device.

A gameplay system for providing interactivity based on a piece of merchandise or other object held or worn by a player. The system includes an object identification assembly, which may be a modified computer vision system, that operates to sense, for a gameplay participant, the presence and identity of a particular augmenting object such as themed merchandise worn or held by a rider of a theme park ride. The sensing may be performed by detecting an on-and-off pattern of light emitted from the object. In response, the gameplay system selects or modifies the interactive features of gameplay associated with the participant based on the identified augmenting object. For example, the interactive features are selected from memory by the gameplay system controller to match a character associated with the augmenting object during any interactive gameplay. This allows the gameplay participant to choose their abilities or powers for gameplay.

An interactive play apparatus comprising: an input device configured to receive an input from a user, one or more communications interfaces, and one or more processors, wherein the one or more processors are configured to: detect one or more electronic devices; for each detected electronic device, determine one or more capabilities of said electronic device; receive one or more inputs via the input device; determine one or more user-perceptible play actions based at least in part on the received one or more inputs; translate the determined one or more play actions into one or more instructions operable to cause one or more of the detected electronic devices to perform one or more functions that at least approximate the determined one or more play actions; wherein the translation is based at least in part on the detected one or more capabilities of the respective detected electronic devices; cause the one or more of the detected electronic devices to perform said one or more functions.

Systems and methods for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device are disclosed. According to at least one embodiment, a method for controlling performance of a digital character depicted at a display device includes: determining a presence of a person located in a physical environment; and in response to determining the presence of the person, facilitating control of the performance of the digital character depicted at the display device by a human operator, by an artificial intelligence (AI) game-engine, or by a combination thereof.

A device for interfacing with an interactive program is provided, including: a housing, including, an IR projector for projecting an IR pattern into an interactive environment; a camera for capturing images of the projected IR pattern; an image processor configured to process the captured images for identification of the projected IR pattern; a transceiver configured to communicate with a computing device, the transceiver configured to transmit data generated by the image processor to the computing device, such that a position of the device in the interactive environment is determined based on the captured images of the IR pattern, the determined position of the device being utilized as input for the interactive program.