It's been happening to me more lately, but this isn't something new. The player models aren't loading in fast enough by the time you get there. They have placeholder all-black silhouette appearances until they finish loading.

Elsonso wrote: »

What is "Distance model culling of NPC character doesn't work properly"?

Some small size game model will hide from your player cam view,
if you have enough long distance from target model. Because, it
tries to maintain good frame rate for comfortable game playing.

Once, I thought ZOS have uploaded wrong distance culling parameter
at the game data. But it looks like different. Maybe, it's processing delay.

Some recent change of game data which ZOS did destroy rendering duty balance.