Good thinking, but it's sadly not so easy.  A point in the lower left hand corner could be tens, hundreds, thousands or even millions of miles away.  The only real way to do it would be to see which ones pass through the direct center, effectively going through those stars in order to check equidistant points.<br/><br/>We might be able to use the different speeds of the different points and trig in order to figure out which stars are closer than others, but that wouldn't tell us the absolute speed.<br/><br/>To compare, I could stand on a mountain plateau where I could see the night sky straight ahead, and run forward.  Just because some of the stars left my peripheral vision doesn't mean I passed them.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>I should add, though, that it is a crappy and cheaply-done special effect, and it never looked right to me either.  Still, I'd prefer it to a black screen, or worse yet, a starscape in the background that they pull along as the model ship goes.