All I see is blue water and blue sky! HELP ME!

I had downloaded the new update around 12:30 game time, and went to log on. I understand about waiting for clothing to download, but there is nothing but sky and water. No IMing, no teleporting, no landscape, nothing. And, my lindens are gone!
Oh yes, and in my chat, it says gesture not loaded about 30 times.
Also, a friend said I was online when I wasn't.
I have a powerful computer,and I just updated the drivers.

ok, please help me, I am stumped and I want to get back online.
Thank you,

I think you are seeing the EXACT same problem that happened to my GF. Unfortunately, she was offline for a month while this issue was being sorted out.

When you try to log in and get to the part where you're just staring at the sky waiting for your avie to appear, pull up the Alt-1 window. Look at the ping times. I'm guessing that both Ping User and Ping Sim show 10000 ms. Also, you can probably still look through your inventory but not really do anything with it. Furthermore, your friends will be seeing online notices for you and then about 30secs later seeing an offline notice for you.

If this is in fact the case then I know all too well about this issue. When LL was contacted (several times) they asked for her log file and then were adamant that it was her connection... that she needed to be talking with her ISP. This really made no sense as she had been having problems 2 updates prior and they had her upgrade her vid card. Also, she had no other problems with her connection and in fact her connection was always much better than mine when she was able to log in. Of course, when contacted, her ISP claimed there was nothing wrong on their end.

We tried everything. Updated everything. Reset everything. Nothing worked. I really felt that her video card was the culprit eventhough LL flat out told her it wasn't. However, it was the only 'weak link' of sorts in her system.

So I started digging through her log file myself and from what I saw when she tried to log on and what the result was in the log file, it appeared that as soon as SL started to try to stream content to her client, her computer turned deaf so to speak and started losing all the packets. Then when Phoenix made the infamous post about the network code being on the same thread as the rendering code, I felt pretty sure that I was right on this one. We upgraded her motherboard to one that was pretty close to what she had before but had an AGP slot and got her an nVidia 6800. Poof. Problems gone.

I still don't know *exactly* what the cause of the problem was but I feel pretty safe saying it didn't have anything to do with the mobo. It may have been an issue with the driver for her old card but I doubt it. It really seems that her old card just couldn't handle the load and for some reason the SL client wasn't recognizing this. By the way, the "couldn't load gesture" thing never popped up in the chat window with my experience with this issue (that I can remember) but I do recall that it was in the log file. I really can't say what this is or if it has any significance.

The fact you said that you have a powerful computer is a bit curious as I still think that this issue is hardware related. Can you post detailed specs of your comp, especially what video card you're using?

Anyway, I really went through hell trying to get this problem fixed for my gf without wasting any money on upgrades that either wouldn't work or weren't neccessary so I reallly hope that my experiences with this problem can help you.

-Meiyo