I too have a partially finished Star Raiders clone on my hd. I use a 2D stars routine behind the 3D graphics, it works well and provides me with exactly the effect I was looking for. The speed is variable depending on the thrust level(0-9), there is also a dampening effect that smoothly transitions the star movement when changing direction. I am also doing the 3d models based on the boxart for the Atari 800 version (the pyramid object in the screenshot is an unfinished test object). Good luck!
