How to Create Custom Block Displays & Text Holograms in Minecraft 1.20+ (No Mods)
How to use Minecraft's display entities (block_display, item_display, text_display), added in 1.19.4, to build floating text holograms, scaled 3D models and furniture without client mods.
1. Why Display Entities Beat Armor Stands
Server admins used to build floating text and furniture out of invisible armor stands with custom names, often hundreds of them. That caused lag, because every armor stand is a full entity with physics, ticking and equipment packets.
Minecraft 1.19.4 added text_display, block_display and item_display entities. They are interpolated on the client, have no server-side physics, and support 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]}
}