How to improve visualization

I am about 1500-1600, but I can't see the chessboard in my head. I can see a few moves ahead locally, but cannot see the whole board. I can hold fairly complex software architecture in my head, but not a chessboard. I have been playing for fun for 45 years, and it does not seem to improve. Any suggestions on how to improve visualization? tools? exercises? websites? etc.

Thanks,

They have a new button now on the new version of chess.com. It's called "focus" mode, hopefully this well help you better visualize. 

When I was coaching high school chess in the '90's, some of my top. county-champion players and I decided to try blindfold chess.  Trying to do the whole 8x8 board all-at-once proved too much, so we tried a 4x4 mental board starting with P-K-Q-P on the back ranks and we did that easily enough.  Then we went to 5x5 with P-N-K-Q-P on the back ranks and we handle that with difficulty.  We hit the wall at 6x6.  Some guys tried simplified back ranks, like P-P-K-Q-P-P and that wasn't too bad.  But when they tried N-B-K-Q-B-N on the back ranks with a row of 6 P's on the next rank, no one was able to get through an entire game.

I've often wanted to revisit that experiment, trying an 8x8 board, initially with P-P-P-K-Q-P-P-P on the back ranks: the key thing here is to remember where the two K's and two Q's are and the pawn structure for each side.

Then gradually replace the P's with other pieces and then start filling in P's where they belong.

Another, similar attempt might be to leave out the Q-side pieces and pawns so you only have K-side: K, B, N, R and the four pawns in front of them, but the whole board is available for legal moves. Once you can handle that, add the Q and the pawn in front of her.  If you can handle that, add the QB and pawn in front of him.  Etc.

Personally, there are some things in life where I couldn't do it then became extremely skilled due to repetition.  On was computer programing in assembly language on the early home computers: Apple II, IBM PC, etc.  I had to frequently convert back and forth in my mind in binary and in hexidecimal numbers in order to do graphics.  It was awful at first, but once I got it I could always do it.  I'm hoping the same is true with entire board visualization.

Wow, thanks for all the info!

To be clear, I was not asking specifically about playing blindfold, but when I was 14 years old, my chess buddy which I used to beat, started reading Tal's book, and started beating me regularly, and then even when he was blindfold and me not, he would still beat me! So I thought my incapacity to see the board in my head i.e. to play blindfold was rare among chess players. And I thought this was a prerequisite to calculating, because how can you evaluate a position a few moves deep if you can't see it in your head?