Okay, explaining personal experience is notoriously difficult - but here we go:
This is a story - this is not literally true, but is a roughly similar shape of things.
My experience is that I am a little thing piloting a giant thing (my body) - I sit in a seat and watch a screen. That screen shows me what my eyes see, and to the edges and beyond are empty. In front of me - between the screen and me - is an empty space. In that space I can draw lines, color things, move things, rotate things.
If I concentrate hard enough I can overlay (by seeing the space while I have my eyes open) an imagined thing in real space (The imagined item is still originating from that space - not the screen - but the screen and that space...mix). The screen from my eyes is an order of magnitude brighter - so I have to focus in order to do that.
I can imagine things with my eyes open... but when I do, I am not facing the 'eye-screen' inside my head, I'm looking down and away from it and only at that space of imagination.
I recently starting drawing: It seems to solidify this space/ability more than any other mental exercise I've tried. I have noticed a distinct improvement when I started deconstructing what I was seeing in real live down to basic shapes (In that imagined space and overlaying it on what I was seeing).
To kind of piggyback on here since you described your experience very well, I'll give my own as a contrast to yours:
Mine seems similar. Instead of piloting a body I just am my body, and I don't perceive any screen. Instead of an "area between me and the screen" I just have a completely separate workspace of sorts where I can visualize things. But - and this is where I differ from you the most I think - in my mind that workspace is quite separate from my field of real vision. If I concentrate I can kind of overlay them, but it feels very artificial.
Likewise, this mirrors my experiences near exactly. In a very real sense, I am/embody the contours of my senses.
On a possibly related note, when I was very young there was a moment I distinctly remember 'pulling away' from this sense-surface-of-self, and a bone deep certainty that if I did so I would be lost and/or have done something unrecoverable. Spooked me thoroughly at the time, but now I wonder if doing so would have formed that intermediary-type viewpoint.
I describe it as two separate screens because I can't really overlay them (imagine putting one monitor in front of the other and trying to see through the first one; not going to happen), but otherwise don't have much issue imagining things.
Another good comparison might be that my eyes are 4k but my imagination is like 480p.
When I was doing forms and rehearsing techniques in martial arts, I would imagine wireframe fighters coming at me. Normally they were yellow, but a successful strike against "hitboxes" in their limbs, torso, or head would turn the corresponding part red. I couldn't see them as such like a HUD, but I could visualize them, and it noticeably improved my technique.
I've adopted the "tiny pilot controlling a meat mech" perspective before, but the "screen" is wrap-around and very close, there's no space outside or between me and it.
Now consider that the idea that there is a "me" perceiving the screen is only an un-investigated assumption, and that this "me" is actually only implied by whatever object appears on the screen.
Can any such separate entity actually be found?
Or is the thinker implied by the thought, the listener implied by the sound, the feeler implied by the feeling, etc.
This is a story - this is not literally true, but is a roughly similar shape of things.
My experience is that I am a little thing piloting a giant thing (my body) - I sit in a seat and watch a screen. That screen shows me what my eyes see, and to the edges and beyond are empty. In front of me - between the screen and me - is an empty space. In that space I can draw lines, color things, move things, rotate things.
If I concentrate hard enough I can overlay (by seeing the space while I have my eyes open) an imagined thing in real space (The imagined item is still originating from that space - not the screen - but the screen and that space...mix). The screen from my eyes is an order of magnitude brighter - so I have to focus in order to do that. I can imagine things with my eyes open... but when I do, I am not facing the 'eye-screen' inside my head, I'm looking down and away from it and only at that space of imagination.
I recently starting drawing: It seems to solidify this space/ability more than any other mental exercise I've tried. I have noticed a distinct improvement when I started deconstructing what I was seeing in real live down to basic shapes (In that imagined space and overlaying it on what I was seeing).