While a ship is at warp, one can normally observe the image of the stars being distorted due to the speed of the ship. You can imply if you see the stars "approach" the ship, that they then pass it, and can be seen on the back of the ship "moving away". But in Star Trek: First Contact, when the Phoenix makes its first warp "jump" you can clearly see the stars pass it, even though the ship never leaves the solar system. Why is this?
the reality is that even at light speed you wouldn't see any stars move the visual effects department shows the streaks to communicate that the ship is moving I think the tongue-in-cheek explanation is that it's not stars but excited dust particles reacting with the navigational deflectors . . . the view from a ship traveling at FTL speeds would look like a black tunnel with everything behind red shifted, and everything ahead blue shifted so the most you'd see ahead would be any infrared shifted to visual range, and behind you'd see things like xray and gamma rays shifted down to visual range you wouldn't see any stars unless you were close enough and only if they were directly ahead or behind . . . none whoooshing past the ship
It could be a unique optical illusion within the subspace domain. Maybe a collection and bending of light around a vessel at warp from multiple sources over a vast distance...
yeah, i've always taken it as some sort of "light distortion" effect, and not actual stars passing. I also tend to take the occasional streaking stars we see it sub-light as dust particles illuminated by the navigational deflector. One thing I did like about JJ-Trek was the on-screen warp effect, it felt more like I was seeing the "warping" of space instead of a screen saver.