focusing at night

Granting your inner ear is compromised, your eyes will attempt to seek out set & stable visual cues in an attempt to assist your remaining peripheral sources; your muscles & joints. Focusing on one distant light at night grants only a sense of distance, while decreasing or altogether depriving your eyes—& subsequently your brain—of horizontal & vertical visual cues.

From the perspective of orientation, the difficulty you experience becomes analogous to the greater difficulty (or impossibility) an astronaut with a healthy inner ear will experience when attempting to establish their north, south, east, & west orientation relative to only one visual cue—that of a distant star embedded in the vacuum of space.

If you're willing, walk the same walkway during daylight hours & focus on a single visual cue roughly the same size, shape, & distance as said light at night-time. It is likely you will not find this confusing or disorienting as your orientation in space will be calculated by peripheral visual cues.

Mm, not so much amplified vertigo but rather amplified disequilibrium, yes, re' walking towards a distant light at night. Particularly if the ground I'm walking on is uneven or bumpy. I have no issues watching aeroplanes fly overhead, though.

Watching my niece & nephew jump up & down on a trampoline reliably amplifies my disequilibrium, too, & subsequently induces a slight degree of nausea—which is depressing because they spend all day everyday jumping on trampolines it seems *sighs & chuckles

Welcome to the forum, nsully.