US Patent 10917445 Communication sessions between computing devices using dynamically customizable interaction environments

Techniques are described for providing and managing interactive communication sessions between client computing devices, such as via Web browser software executing on the client computing devices to interact with server computer devices providing a shared visual interaction environment for the devices, and with the shared visual interaction environment being dynamically customizable to add and/or remove selected types of functionality that have corresponding visual representations in the shared visual interaction environment. In some situations, the described techniques include providing multiple predefined types of functionality and/or enabling users to add new types of user-defined functionality, using visible layers that each present one or more types of visual information or other visual effects corresponding to at least one of the functionality types. In some situations, the techniques support an augmented reality and/or virtual reality system, and enable control over a variety of types of communication-enabled physical objects (e.g., the Internet of Things).