The bug

The free camera provided by /camera can detach the camera from the player character. However, if it gets moved to unrendered chunks, the chunks won't appear unless the player character is also there. Therefore, some aspects of the camera are still tied to the player instead of the camera. This kind of defeats the point of the camera command because if we need to physically move the player to match the camera, what's the point of detaching it at all? We want to keep the player safely far away from our cutscenes.

How to reproduce

1. Create a world
2. /camera @a set minecraft:free pos 10000 64 0
3. Wait a bit
4. /tp @a 10000 64 0
5. Wait a bit
6. /tp @a 0 64 0

Expected result
You can see terrain immediately after running the camera command

Observed result
You can't see terrain until running the teleport command. However, even when the player teleports away, terrain is still rendered. This implies the separated camera can keep chunks alive if they're already rendered, but can't initiate rendering on its own.

Important note
This does not only apply to new terrain. Even existing, pre-generated terrain will not start rendering unless the player is present.