Allthough not used often in the past gesture mode worked fine on my Spark. Since the last fw upgrade I notice gesture mode isn't working correctly anymore. Seems face recognition isn't working well. After a while the lights went green so I waved the Spark goodby. He went up and backwards a few meters but when making the selfie gesture it came back to it's starting point. Strange. Btw, new mode for capturing video in gesture mode isn't working for me neither.
I always connect first my Ipad before flying in gesture mode, in case Spark starts behaving strange.
For the rest I have no issues with my Spark.
Do you see the same behavior or is gesture mode still working for for all of you?

Gesture mode seems to be very sensitive to ambient lighting and the colors the pilot is wearing.

Will try it again this evening wearing clothes with higher visibility/contrast to the surroundings. I'm flying in my garden so I think a red shirt should contrast well with green.

You are not alone. There are many other pilots, including me, that are experiencing VERY BAD gestures performance after the latest firmware upgrade. It was working perfectly before. Now, it's so bad I can't even demo the feature to people anymore.

Black Shirts = Gesture Mode Failures

Check a few spots to see if this is an environment issue or perhaps something else. By environment, is it possible that you are standing in an area that makes facial recognition confused?