During the 80s I wrote a 3D relativistic simulation. It accounted for Lorentz contraction of course, but one could also (optionally) have it account for the travel time of light to the observer’s eyes (and of course, perspective). The travel time of light combined with the Lorentz contraction are what produce the “Terrell rotation”, by which 3D objects passing by appear to rotate instead of contract. (The program did not model color so it did not show blue/red shift.)

But I will never forget, when I first ran the simulation (once the program compiled), and the simulation I chose was a street lined with lamp posts, and I saw the same inward curving lamp post effect that was predicted by a famous MIT simulation.

One feature I added was that the simulation could attach small clocks to the various corners of the object. This showed that the front edge of an object going by was, in effect, at a different time than the rear end — which explains the Lorentz contraction: it is a time difference: the stationary observer sees the passing object’s leading edge as it exists at one moment in the moving frame, but the trailing edge as it exists at a different moment in the moving frame. Thus, the object does not really contract: it is time warped.