The "headlight effect" is always turned on in Super Tyrian, which can obscure objects that are not within a 90-degree field of view in front of the player's ship.

Relativistic beaming (also known as Doppler beaming, Doppler boosting, or the headlight effect) is the process by which relativistic effects modify the apparent luminosity of emitting matter that is moving at speeds close to the speed of light.

One consequence of this is that a forward observer should normally be expected to intercept a greater proportion of the object's light than a rearward one; this concentration of light in the object's forward direction is referred to as the "searchlight effect" (or headlight effect).