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Improve Display Entity Backend

Display entities have been an amazing addition to Java Edition server development, however their implementation has made certain (seemingly basic) functionality unreasonably hard to implement. These are some grievances that would be nice to update:

• It's hard to rotate display entities in full circles, repeatedly due to how linear interpolation and euclidean degrees work. If I want to interpolate a display entity facing 0 degrees to rotate to 360, nothing happens (as 0 and 360 are the same direction, understandably). If I, instead, decide to split the animation into two segments, one lerp (linear interpolation) for 180 and another lerp for 360, the displays will rotate halfway, and back the other way in reverse, rather than a full circle. If I decide to then split the animation into four 90-degree segments, I can achieve the desired result, but at the performance cost of four times the packets sent to the client, and the issue described next:
• Display entity transforms and client interpolations can't be sent out on the same tick, or else nothing visually happens. If I wish to string together multiple interpolations back-to-back, like described above, I must wait 1 tick in between each step to allow the entity to update it's starting transforms before giving it the next lerp. This makes the animations visually jarring and makes the desirability of client-sided smooth animations obsolete.
• I'm about to reach the character limit so I'll describe the rest of my suggestions in comments.

Registered User shared this idea

• September 02, 2026 23:09
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  • September 02, 2026 23:23
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  Part two of this post:

  • Display entities should have customizable "pivot/anchor" points, which they themselves should be capable of interpolating. This is especially useful for rotations that need to be rotated AROUND a point with a given radius. Currently there is no way to do this without looping every tick and teleporting. That is very laggy.
  • Display entities should have the option of either stretching/squishing the block texture they use when manipulating their scale OR keeping the block texture proportionate to normal block sizes, and instead tiling the texture repeatedly when the model dimensions grow beyond one block (sort of like it's done with the dirt block texture in the backgrounds of certain game menus). This is useful for using multiple display entities to construct miniature figures/structures.
  • Display entity interpolations should support basic easing functions rather than being confined to only linear interpolation. This would allow a lot of room for better/more natural animations.
  • Text displays should get an extra "billboard" option to allow fixed positioning while being able to see the text from the back rather than not visible at all.
  • Text displays with background boxes enabled shouldn't let you see through water sources.
  • Add support for (mob) entity displays.