Actually, if Riv were masturbating on the other side of the planet, and Surfer/Superman were trying to peak in on him watching interracial midget porn, I would argue Surfer would have a much bigger chance to see him than Superman. If not have the ability to outright see him doing it.
They'd both be trying to see though. Surfer could likely create some sort of penis portal that can change angles, while Superman would have to x-ray vision through everything. I don't know if that counts as eyesight though, but it should allow him to "see" Riv working his wiener in an attempt to get it up.
At the very least we know Surfer could feel it. "I sense the dust motes moving from a furious hand and feel the tear drops fall onto an empty pizza box in a poorly lit room."
I'm 90 percent sure Superman can filter his x-ray vision to turn into a flesh vision. It works in comics by simply removing layers.
If you put a normal dressed man in the middle of a building, I'm pretty sure Superman could stop at his flesh and see him as if he were naked. I'm pretty sure he could stop at underwear too. Superman is a pretty high tier peeping tom.
Say if riv were holding poop in his hands while clothed, I think Superman could see through the clothes without looking through the poop.
Surfer and Galactus were by the sun when they looked on a specific bunker on the Skrull homeworld, weren't they?
Superman can see anywhere on Earth, which is less then a light year...
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Yeah, with cosmic awareness, SS can see wherever he needs to, in the universe. Some versions of Superman could potentially replicate this feat, but it's shoddy at best.
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Technically, is using CA the same as "seeing", as in using his vision?
Anyway, I always thought Surfer could see as far as he needed to see, line-of-sight-wise. Nothing to back that up, just something I always thought as a kid.
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Superman does not need cosmic awareness to do that. He has scanned nigh infinite phantom zone with just one glance in its entirety and has been claimed to see to the source wall from Earth.