I'm pretty sure the key to seeing ship dots from a distance is to lower your video resolution for the game to 1024x768. It won't look quite as pretty, but you should be able to spot ships easier. They'll show up as little squares long before you get close enough to see the actual shape of the ship.
Here's what the [window] section of my conf.ini looks like:
[window]
width=1024
height=768
ColourBits=32
DepthBits=24
StencilBits=8
ChangeScreenRes=1
FullScreen=1
DrawIfNotFocused=0
EnableResize=0
EnableClose=1
SaveAspect=0
Use3Renders=0