I feel like I kinda have this, and I'd describe it like this:

With actual vision, there's a pipeline of steps: light hits actual cone/rod cells -> optic nerve fires -> brain stage 1 -> brain stage 2 -> brain stage 3... where each of those stages also have various side effects associated with the experience of "seeing"

I can't synthesize "brain stage 1" at all I don't think, I need my optic nerve to send some signals to "see". But I think I might be synthesizing "brain stage 2" when I imagine seeing e.g. a red apple in a pretty similar way to actually seeing it - I can feel "red apple vibes" but there is no image of a red apple my field of view. My brain state certainly contains some data about the color of the imaginary apple and the shape of it, but it's not nearly the same as actually seeing it.

This is all astonishingly hard to explain in a way that communicates accurately between two people though.