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This is nice. I'm kinda opposite. I tend to be able to zoom-out in my mind, where I'm and look at my bearing from a bird's eye view like a map (positioning myself on a map such as Google Maps).

I like playing strategy games more than first-person shooters. I did played a lot and started with FPS but stopped after being rushed to the hospital after I collapsed playing a game way back in the early days. :-)

> after I collapsed playing a game way back in the early days

Ouch. What was the collapse caused by? Was it related to the game?

I think exhaustion and dis-orientation. I remember being told to eat more, and stay out in the sun.

I've been going by foot, metro and bike for over 10 years in the European 2 million city where I live, and I still get lamentably lost when trying to connect two points I should know for the first time.

> You can fly me to a new country and drop me in a city I've never seen before, and I'll start navigating it on foot

This doesn't work in triangle-based cities like Szczecin :) It's very hard to stop the assumption that 2 right turns is roughly 180 degrees :)

And in neighborhoods planned as concentric circles. My navigation module goes completely bonkers.

It probably doesn't work in cities like Prague either, parts of which were specifically designed like a labyrinth (not a grid at all) to confuse invaders.

>I always thought that it was my innate ability to navigate three-dimensional spaces, but now I begin to suspect that this is a trained "module". I walk a lot (mostly in cities), and I played first-person shooters since the first DOOM back in 1993. And I recently found out that I strongly prefer first-person games to top-down / 2D games -- I instantly feel "at home" there.

For me it was MUDs, exploring and running to known locations in MUDs almost certainly developed that feature in me as I was playing then in 1994 when I was all of 9 years old and my sole means of transportation was my bicycle in the real world.

I thought I had this. My SO laughed fit to bust when I said so. Maybe it vanished like my hair.

More likely is a strong visual intuitive sense of place which can't translate well to street names and left/right statements

VSauce has a Mind Field episode on the phenomenon you described - 3D, first person games improving spatial memory and navigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RHsAUyFCAM.

I have the feeling that I have had this all my life. Maybe it is because as I child I was allowed to wander around on myself by foot and by bike. I remember that when I was still in primary school, I often made biking trips going as far as 6 miles from our home. When I am in a strange area, I always have some sense of the direction from which I came.

For me it's the opposite, when walking around I'll have a sense where "north" or "home" is, and at some point it will switch (north becoming east for example) and I won't notice it.