[yor_on]

Well, as I see it you have to differ between optical effects and the 'room time geometry' getting distorted. Because when you go very fast near lights speed, light will behave differently depending on where it's coming from. http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/ check out those animations and see.

But yeah the 'boxes' in front will contract from the pilots point of view, but maybe? Assuming very close to light, the universe becomes a perpendicular infinite 'line' of sorts, or more as a 'dish' radiating out? That one is so weird But then you have the way light bends to your motion to consider too. As for what really happens behind your ship though? I think of it as the way we defines photons, some times, which we naturally shouldn't .

That close to light the universe almost must cease to exist, if Einstein is correct.