The mother of all sim crashes

[Jackson Redstar]

ok maybe I exaggerate but deffo a very weird crash and I been on SL 14 years now. So shooting a wedding and the sim is pretty full about 60 people, lagging up pretty good then wham! sim crash. After a bit I finally got back. Only about 3 people there. Well when I first arrived maybe 10 but they then disappeared. So I waited nobody showing up.  No avis around only like 3 others on radar. I see the wedding coordinator online status come on after like 10 min and I message her, what is the deal - we continuing the wedding? and she then tells me - we in the middle of the ceremony now there is about 30 people here! Like I said, no green dots, no avies in radar, I wasn't frozen could move and cam fine. So I re logged and when I came back - there is everybody! I just never seen sim behaviour like that before. Maybe this is the new normal for cloud servers now, I dunno. Was a trip though!

[Fritigern Gothly]

Something like this has happened to me a few years ago, well before the uplift even became an idea in the mind of one of the Lindens. I think it was 2011, I was at a club, the region (not the sim) crashed, I came back as one of the first ones, and I saw nobody around, my friend started to talk to me, I told her didn't see her or anyone else. She told me where she was standing but that spot was (or appeared) empty. After I tp'ed out and back everyone was there. 

I think it's the viewer bugging out when you log in at JUST the right moment for it to do so. 
I am no viewer dev although I have hung around some for a few years, but I kind of assume that the region will send its caps (capabilities) to the viewer, the viewer does stuff as a result of that. But what if there is a cap that says "hey, I have avatars, they are here, here and here" but that cap never makes it to the viewer? Then, as avatar updates are sent to the viewer, the viewer goes "I was never told that there are avatars here, so I will reject these avatar updates".

It is rare that these "perfect" conditions happen for this, but when it happens, it definitely raises an eyebrow!