// the find
shiffman/Most-Pixels-Ever-Processing
The Most Pixels Ever is an open-source Java and C++ framework for spanning Processing sketches and openFrameworks applications across multiple screens.
Most Pixels Ever is a TCP-based synchronization framework for splitting a single Processing sketch or openFrameworks app across multiple physical screens. You run one server and N clients; the server sends a "go render frame" signal and waits for all clients to report done before advancing. Built by Daniel Shiffman for large-scale interactive installations and art projects.
The protocol is dead simple — pipe-delimited text messages over a socket, documented right in the README, easy to debug with netcat. It supports both synchronous (barrier) and asynchronous client modes, which is the right distinction for installations that mix rendering nodes with audio or data nodes. The openFrameworks and Cinder ports exist, so you're not locked to Processing. For its use case — art installations where you control all the hardware — a hand-rolled text protocol is actually more reliable than something that requires a broker.
Last commit was 2016; Processing itself has moved significantly since then and the bundled JARs (GStreamer 0.10, macosx32 dylibs) are ancient enough to not work on any modern macOS. There's no error recovery in the protocol — if one client crashes mid-frame, the server hangs waiting for a done message that never comes. Setup documentation is "check the wiki" pointing to a GitHub wiki that has minimal content. This is abandonware that still works on the right vintage hardware but has no path forward.