How to Create Custom Block Displays & Text Holograms in Minecraft 1.20+ (No Mods)
Learn how to use Minecraft's new display entities (block_display, item_display, text_display) introduced in 1.19.4 / 1.20 to build floating text holograms, scaled 3D custom models, and furniture without any client mods.
1. The Power of Display Entities over Legacy Armor Stands
Historically, server admins relied on hundreds of invisible armor stands with custom names to create floating hologram text and furniture. This caused severe client rendering lag because each armor stand calculates physics, tick loops, and equipment packets.
In Minecraft 1.19.4 and 1.20+, Mojang introduced native `text_display`, `block_display`, and `item_display` entities. These entities are client-side interpolated, feature zero server-side physics overhead, and allow arbitrary 3D translation, rotation, scaling, billboard modes, and opacity.
2. Summoning a Glowing Floating Text Hologram
To spawn a floating text display that always rotates to face the player (`billboard:"center"`) with a transparent dark background and glowing text, execute:
/summon text_display ~ ~1.5 ~ {
text:'{"text":" Welcome to Enzonic SMP ","color":"#b2ff00","bold":true}',
billboard:"center",
background:1073741824,
shadow:true,
transformation:{scale:[1.5f,1.5f,1.5f],translation:[0f,0f,0f],left_rotation:[0f,0f,0f,1f],right_rotation:[0f,0f,0f,1f]}
}