There is a difference when you fly autopilot. When I fly manually in a heavy storm, with a small aircraft, my plane goes anywhere. Banking, stalling you name it. Great. I love winds. But I agree it is incomplete.
As far as I know in MSFS wind and airflow are in horizontal direction and it works over large, moving areas, like “mini stormfronts” of some kind moving around and hitting aircraft. Sometimes that movement has a vertical component and when that hits you, you get “turbulence” combined with heavy wind. I’ve never seen upward only air streams like thermals, there is always a stronger horizontal component.
For a while now, this is #7 and #10 in the current wish list. But #7 is still “not planned yet” by Asobo/MS and they regard it as something that third party developers should do… #10 (below) is started… In the official wish list, #7 does not say “thermals and turbulence” it sais “open up the weather system to third parties” but the topic was about the same thing. This wish is undercounted, there are in total at least a 1000 votes for this when they would add up every wish topic, also wish topics about turbulence. It’s actually the same thing.
Please keep voting the big one 