Does Good Chess Require Visual-Spatial Skills?

I'm not sure if visual-spatial is the right word, but I'm referring to this notion of looking at the board and being able to process all the information at once (where yoru pieces are...where the opponenets pieces are...where potential pieces could be 5..10 moves ahead...what all the different lines could be). 

I'm getting better at this, but I did recall when I first started playing last year that I honestly could only focus on my immediate pieces and it was a pain trying to think about other pieces on the board and the potential interactions they have. 

My really quite curious actually what goes through you player's minds when you play.  Like how do you think about and picture the board.  Are you able to literally capture the entire board in your imagination and simultaneously see all these interactinos and potential interactinos.  Or are you more like me maybe where you see only certain sections at a time and move from one section/possibility to another?  I actually think I'm getting better now at seeing more, interestingly.  I don't have to literally double-check to make sure where certain pieces are. 

But I think I may not be able to view the entire board and its configuration and work with it as one big puzzle in my brain yet. 

Not sure if I'm describing this in a way thta t makes sense.  But hopefully you see what I mean. 

As per depth psychology, I think awareness certainly improves with experience, since the mind does recall, albeit sub-consciously, everything it encounters. . . . . Yet, even the greatest players make their mistakes.  I get the sense that all games are won or lost by calculation and miscalculation, so having sufficient time to form judgments and make careful decisions seems to play a huge role. . . . . During the computerized training opportunities, the mechanical nature of the puzzles, with its timed valuations and "best move" focus does interfere with play on the organic level. . . . . . There's is more to the game than just beating opponents.  In any case, it is great to see so much action with the game through this website.

Chess is highly visual.  When the best players are playing at their best, they can see not only all of the piece interactions that convey protection and threats, but all of these interactions as they might change over the next several moves, or even further into the future.  Some players can play blindfold chess with many opponents.

Most of us have experiential and/or visualization/intelligence limitations that prevent us from performing at that level.  Some of us took up the game too late in life to be able to do this--chess mastery seems to be something like first language mastery for children.  For those of us who cannot see like the masters, our ability to predict future outcomes on the board is spotty at times, and seemingly non-existent at others.  We cannot see the immediate future as well, or even the present at times.  Our inability to see and feel all of the direct and implied current and future interactions between the pieces on the board means we often tread through minefields without adequate plans.  And our games are won by the player who makes the smaller, least-frequent mistakes.

One aspect of chess visualization that I find uncomfortable is the difference between playing online and OTB.  A standard tournament board is large.  When your opponent fianchettoes his queenside bishop and you have castled kingside, you have to turn your eyes or even your head to take in what is happening on opposite corners of the board.  Online, it's all easy to see without moving your eyes and head at all.  This small difference probably means some players may remember the diagonal threat online versus forgetting it OTB, assuming similar time controls.

When I first started, every game just looked like a random jumble of pieces on the board but even though I am still pretty weak I now see things like outpost squares and useful pawn breaks without conciously 'thinking' about them, if that makes sense. Same thing with tactics, at first I would spend five minutes looking for the first move in a relatively simple tactics puzzle, now I can narrow down the candidate moves in a few seconds because of having seen so many similar ideas before.

Even at my low level I know tht I have improved through practice and study so I am slightly less in awe of the GM's now. Given the amount of time and dedication they have all put into the game I realise their skills are not simply 'god given'.

I remember when I finally felt like I could see the whole board, and not just sections of it (usually where the last few moves happened to be).... that took about 3 years   But playing blitz slowed me down a lot, I never played any long games when I began.  As Estragon said, slow games are better for learning these things.  You certainly wouldn't have to wait 3 years heh.

Also true is how for experienced players the patterns in your long term memory become your new frame of reference, and you work from there.  You already know what the reasonable moves and ideas are instead of feeling like the board is a jumbled crazy mess (we all start there!).  And then you spend your time figuring out which of the reasonable moves and plans may be a mistake, and also if there's anything your patterns didn't alert you to.

I think this is called "spatial". I used to be very good at "spatial" in chess, could play blindfold and easily reconstruct all the moves of the 50 or so current games being played.

But something happened to me and now my "spatial" is way below average in all areas except chess positions   [spatial is down in that also but still very high]

So while I greatly flunk the standard tests for "spatial" [ I score at about the lower 15% level and they determined some brain damage] I still have very good spatial for chess.

They gave me pictures with lots of circles and squares and curved lines etc and after looking at such picturess--I could not reconstruct-failed miserably on reconstruction which 85% of the population could do.

What this really means  - I don't know...?

If anyone specializes in this field let me know?

Actually I would say "no" to the OP. I am a "logical" rather than "visual" player. I use many broad positional and strategical themes without using visual calculation till later on, if at all.

I should add though that I have an excellent visual spatial sense; I score well above average at the blocks part of IQ tests.

In your case, could you good visio-spatial sense be operating in the background of your mind w/o you knowing it and allowing you to focus one broader aspects of the game? 

Chess still seems to me unavoidably optical in nature to at least some degree.  It's not like abstract math or some other type of thought or task that doesn't require a visual focus. 

I do OK in math and logic in my college courses, but find that the visual aspects of chess can be tough for me at times.  I'm often unsure of what to focus on at any given time in a game.  There are so many pieces and possibilities and being able to see them all and calculate from there is a challenge at times.