I’ve drawn an ellipse in the XZ plane, and set my perspective slightly up on the Y-axis and back on the Z, looking at the center of ellipse from a 45-degree angle, using gluPerspective() to set my viewing frustrum.
Unrotated, the major axis of the ellipse spans the width of my viewport. When I rotate 90-degrees about my line-of-sight, the major axis of the ellipse now spans the height of my viewport, thus deforming the ellipse (in this case, making it appear less eccentric).
What do I need to do to prevent this deformation (or at least account for it), so rotation about the line-of-sight preserves the perceived major axis of the ellipse (in this case, causing it to go beyond the viewport)?
It looks like you’re using 1.0 as the aspect when you call gluPerspective(). You should use width/height. For example, if your viewport is 640×480, you would use 1.33333 as the aspect argument.