Patent ID: 7389417

Claim:
In a digital computing system that includes a main control program exemplified by any of a game code module, an application program, a simulation or an operating system, and wherein the main control program communicates with one or more functional user interface (UI) modules for data processing of a type which does not require human sensory interaction with a user of the computing system, as exemplified by displaying data entry fields, providing audio indications, video indications or other human perceptible sensory interface actions, a method of enabling change to any of the human sensory interactions such as visual data display, audio output or video display, without having to change the functional UI modules or main control program, comprising: providing a common communication scheme for use between various types of UI modules, including functional UI modules for providing data for presentation to a user, and one or more UI plug-in software modules for implementing UI features by determining how to provide human sensory interaction through mechanisms such as visual display, video display, audio display or any combination of the foregoing; networking a user interface (UI) engine having an engine interface with a main control program running on the computing system so as to provide communication of commands between the main control program and the UI engine; networking to the UI engine and to the main control program and/or other network components one or more functional UI software modules for implementing UI features using functions that do not directly identify how to provide human sensory interaction with a user; networking to the UI engine one or more UI plug-in software modules for implementing UI features that receive input from the one or more functional UI software modules and determine how to provide human sensory interaction through mechanisms such as visual display, video display, audio display, or any combination of the foregoing, such that the determination of how to provide human sensory interaction is determined by the one or more UI plug-in software modules and not by the main control program and/or the one or more functional UI software modules; said one or more functional UI software modules communicating with the UI engine using said common UI communication scheme and thereby providing to one or more functional UI software modules or to the main control program human sensory interaction as required by either the one or more functional UI software modules or the main control program; and changing, adding or deleting one or more of the UI plug-in software modules so as to change the human sensory interaction of one or more functional UI software modules or the main control program, but otherwise leaving one or more functional UI software modules and main control program unchanged.