I’m thinking about sports as an example. I used to do fencing, and sometimes we would learn a new technique or I would imagine one to do, and I would imagine myself doing it, then it was almost like autopilot where my body would do it just how I imagined, like it was easy. It didn’t happen very often but when it did it felt really cool.
No, I have aphantasia so cannot visualise images (fortunately my brain seems to have compensated with Daredevil-esque sound capabilities / eidetic memory for sounds).
It causes so many difficulties. Earlier I saw a comment someone had made mocking people complaining about the lack of planet-side maps in Starfield, saying people who can’t navigate by memory are stupid goobers. I’m not stupid, just my brain doesn’t hold images very well (I’ve been practicing and can hold an image for a split second before it dissipates).
Not wanting to minimize your experience, nor am I saying that starfield shouldn’t have planet-side maps (I haven’t played it, tbh I’m surprised to hear it doesn’t have any) but you don’t have to have a strong ability to visualize things to remember where things are (my ability to visualize is very weak, but I’ve been trying to practice it).
One thing that’s helped my ability to navigate in video games (and to a lesser extent irl) has been my enjoyment of doom mods. Doom 1 and 2 were very hard to navigate by today’s standards and while the levels weren’t fully non-linear, they could be very convoluted and have multiple paths. Most map mods tend to follow this design and can be similarly convoluted, if not moreso. Combine that with gameplay mods and you can easily spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours navigating disorienting maps.
The result of this is that over time I’ve developed an intuition for where I need to go in games. It doesn’t manifest itself as a visual overlay like I hear some people experience, so much as a feeling that going left or right will take me where I want to go (so long as I’ve been there at least once). If you want to improve your ability to find your way around in games without a map then you might consider doing something similar. I can’t guarantee it’ll help, but it might.
Intuition is incredible, sometimes if I’m lost in a game I just let my subconscious take over and I often find my way to where I want to be.
The subconscious is very powerful and often knows more than it’s letting on!