Odd center of lift position

[Scuka]

So, as you can see on the image, it's a pretty basic rocket. It's perfectly symetrical, all fuel tanks are 100% full and all engines are set to 100% thrust. yet the center of lift is shifted to the side, causing the rocket to have a tendency to tip to the side.

Placing some winglets on the rocket fixes it.

But I don't understand why it's shifted without the winglets and how are winglets putting it back into the center? None of my other similarly designed rockets have that problem.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Scuka

[Belphegor]

i think center of lift only shows aerodynamic lift. (wings) (edit. this is probably wrong)

maybe it's off center because you have more drag on one side of your rocket than the other.. your struts on the lower stage are not symetrical and you misplaced a fuel line(?) on the tank nearest to the center of lift. but i don't know if struts and fuel lines have a drag value

Edited August 20, 2014 by Belphegor

[Alshain]

The CoL isn't shifted to the side, there is no center of lift at all. If there were, you would see an arrow like with CoT. Lift is only created by lifting surfaces of which you have none on this craft.

Your rocket is tipping to the side because your missing fuel lines and the tanks are draining unevenly.

[mhoram]

From the picture it looks like the Center of Thrust is centered.

Which engines are you using: LV-T45 or LV-T30?

They look similar but the middle one of your engines should be a LV-T45 because it has Gimbaling.

Gimbaling is a property of an engine that allows it to change the direction of thrust in order to make course corrections.

Without it the Remote Guidance Unit probably has not enough torque to keep the rocket flying in a straight line.

The winglets offer another way of steering the rocket in atmosphere.

[AlexanderB]

If the marker is stuck to the floor like that, theres no wings/winglets to calculate lift from.

The leaning problem is (as noticed before) due to fuel imbalance..

[Scuka]

Yeah, it was the fuel imbalance. For some reason, I was absolutely certain that I connected the fuel lines correctly when I was trying it out. I was wrong, though xD