Cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions raster an electron beam (3 beams in most color CRT televisions) across a screen of fluorescent material(s) exciting the phosphor's electronic state. Once the phosphor relaxes a photon is released. The lifetime of the material's persistence is one to two orders of magnitude faster than the raster period. This is an example of a 0D updating element creating a POV 2D display via 2D translational motion. A pulsed laser with a 2D galvanometer is another example. This project takes a different approach and makes a 2D POV display using a 1D updating element, a line segment or curve of LEDs, and 1 axis of rotation. This method can create finite surfaces with two degrees of freedom. Specifically, this project makes a simple finite plane display.

Cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions were mentioned as a 2D POV display in the 2D POV project description.The method of having a fixed light emitting substrate creates a very difficult design problem for 3D display applications. Each layer of substrate blocks the subsequent layers for the observer, or blocks the incident electrons from exciting the proper layer. This is where the moving substrate POV displays shine. If 1D updating elements, line segments of LEDs, are equally spaced, not parallel, and perpendicular to an axis of rotation, then a 3D display resolution will be the number of lines by the number of LEDs per line by the number of updates per rotation. The resolution units are in a mixed coordinate system. The system described will have a plane where the lines of LEDs block each other, so that not all of the display depth can be viewed in that plane. When looking down the rotation axis the situation changes, but the result depends on the placement of the updating elements with respect to each other and with respect to the rotation axis.