I use OSC quite a bit for building experimental musical instruments and controllers. I use it because it is so simple to implement with low cost ESP32 or ESP8266 controllers, and can also quickly build GUI interfaces using TouchOSC.

The problem I have with it is compatibility amongst devices. For performances I bring my own WiFi router and everything is hardcoded with their own IP address. This controller can control this but not that. Everything is rolled custom.

Recently I've been doing a lot more MIDI stuff at a part-time job, and the compatibility is really awesome. I'm able to make things that just connect with different software and other hardware and it just works. You have to get your head around the spec a bit, but having things just work has been awesome.

MIDI2 is still not fully there. There are TinyUSB implementations rolling out now, so hopefully that all gets a lot easier.

There is also a proposed extension of OSC with a discovery layer. O2 and O2lite is an attempt to solve the connectivity and compatibility issues of OSC. I haven't tried it yet. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/blog/nime-blog22may2022.html

Cool! Couldn't see an obvious publishing date, but the Github repo and comments imply this lacks a "(2015)" tag.

Edit: syntax.

  https://joearms.github.io/published/2016-01-28-A-Badass-Way-To-Connect-Programs-Together.html