There’s also the bias where people are more likely to leave negative than neutral or positive feedback/reviews.
For every one loud unhappy person, there are probably 100s who are happy. And if they were asked, would want more realism, certainly not less.
They did such a good job with the helicopters, I turned all helping assists off and was spinning out of control the first try.
Instead of crying ‘‘Oh this is too hard, they need to change it, it needs to be easier!’’
I said ‘‘Awesome, I actually need to learn how to fly this thing and need to develop some skills!’’.
And it’s super fun!
If they would have implemented Helicopters with no option to disable the helping assistants and marketed it as ‘‘this is the real thing, we needed to make it easier because of some complaints’’, imagine the outroar… Nobody would have looked at Helicopters again after the first easy boring arcade flight.
Now they could have done the same with the thermal implementation, make an helping assistant and call it ‘‘thermals everywhere’’ and give everybody else the realsitic version. But instead somebody from the top decided we should all get the arcade version, which is an insult to the sim community.
Thermals, up & down drafts are the core element of the simulation and so important for everything,
that’s why I hope we push this topic back to the top again, directly in their face.
OMG Are you me? As I had the same experience - As RL glider pilot I mostly despised helicopters as antythesis of pure glide, but because of current SU11 incorrec thermal model I preventing me doing cross country soaring I give helicopters a try - I always disable all helpers, and after fist crash-start I thought - “no way anyone is able to pilot this swirling thing”, then I saw on facebook an amazing sky dolly video of super realisticly looking approach and landing of bell 407 in MSFS and that convinced me it is possible - only takeoff and landings were hard - and with every flight I had great progress - my intuition learned quickly (probably having rudder pedals, throttle and VR helped a lot), I watched some YT video how to cold start G2 and at some point it just snapped in my mind - yestarday I made some crazy chases with many successfull roof landings in sun setting Tokyo - without any crash - that ability to learn acheive something difficult - “take the bull by it’s horns” was awesome!
And indedd current thermals are making great disservice to gliders - as either boring (lift common everywhere), chaotic/unpredictable (lift in places where should be none - above condensation layer, and no lift under good looking clouds) and nothing much to be learned (misrepresentation of weather visual cues) - when in RL being able using visual cues to hunt for good lift make it as passionate as surfer catching good wave and very instructive as for plane pilot gliding can help learn where “turbulence” or dangerous weather is.
Asobo first try to make given feature as realistic as you can, only then add togglable simplifications.
It is always easier to justify and defend realism than even nicest fantasy.
If it were due to implemented ‘wave’ lift that would be terrific! 
I know what you mean though. The thermal model will improve, (I am sure of that). We will have to be patient, we might be having gliding competitions in the near future with a start-gate and a course for us to fly, imagine that!
Charles.
Well imavine that there is already a wishlist item for that! With description how it can be easily implemented by reusing Maverick low alt challenge. Let’s hope Asobo will do it in next sim updates 
more people interested in gliding means more motivation for asobo in improving gliding weather incl thermals
This was the Twitch stream statement:
‘’… we have an optimised (realistic) code ready (they have just decided to take the easy version), we probably gonna ship that in the next update because we see the attention to gliders and a lot of people doing the introduction tutorials, so they step up in terms of knowledge, so we ship something new, will be even better then before’’
Next update > write that in stone!
Nobody should waste their time and test anything before they don’t update to the ‘‘realistic version’’ of thermals. There is no point anymore in testing the current ‘‘easy arcade’’ version, which shouldn’t have been used in the first place.
I will never understand why they do not simply put a switch in the realism settings where the user can choose between “simple” and “realistic” model…
I hear you. But the disadvantage of this approach is that you will have to learn to glide twice. When I started gliding in a real glider I was all over the place. But after a few flights it started to click.
The thermals as it is now is not realistic enough. It has a negative training skill transfer. Once updated and closer to the real thing, take the bull by its horn. Practise, practice and practise.
Sorry another thought. The fact that you can (hopefully in the near future) change the size and strenght of a thermal is exactly the same as setting the difficulty level.
Unlike helicopters where the flight model is fixed.
Over 100 in 6 days, that’s something!
The original thermals thread had almost 600 votes, that’s sadly all gone because they closed it…
but the realistic thermal squad is strong and we will rise again like a true thermal 
Thank you everybody for the votes in such a short time,
let’s keep pushing to send a signal that we are not happy with the arcade stuff!
As after watching last DEV Q&A I lost some confidence if MSFS devs are really aware what fundamental problems SU11 has with thermals and their spatial relation to Cu clouds (which is a must have for finding thermals and realistic cross country soaring over flatlands), and also because Sebastian asked for bug reports depicting incorrect cases in current model I created bug report:
with an illustration summarising all (I think) incorrect and expected cases of thermal relation to Cu clouds.
Please support it and if possible add screenshots depicting incorrect cases.
Note that this report concentrates only on spatial relations between thermals and Cu clouds, there will (hopefully) be another bug report for other aspects of thermals like size, lift distribution, evolutions/periodicity and so on.
Hope this will allow to clearly communicate to dev what is wrong with thermals.
I am also an IRL glider pilot, although I have less experience.
The MSFS thermal core is as thin as a needle and I find it very difficult to soar.
During a 360 degree turn, the first 180 degrees can be climbed at +2m/s, but the second 180 degrees is hit by a -4 to -5m/s downdraft, making it difficult to climb in total.
I think MSFS thermals are unbalanced due to extremely strong downdrafts.
If MS is really serious about gliders, it needs to fix the thermals.
I’m also a RL glider pilot. So far I haven’t encountered a single proper thermal in the sim. And I have in-sim “thermal” flights of over two hours.
We need the connection between cumulus clouds and thermals for realistic visual cues during cross country soaring.
We need realistic thermal mechanics with a column of rising air with strong lift core tapering off toward the edges.
If MS is worried real thermals would be too hard for casual players, then provide a realism setting. That way everyone would be happy.
i agree completly…and would like to add the wish to have “historical” dynamic weather situation for an extended area so we can enjoy "repeating " in sim real glider competions.
For everybody who missed the Q&A, one of my questions got picked, here is a link to it, inculding my response, up & down drafts were also part of it:
If their idea of thermals is the whole sky rising, and they don’t want to fix it because casuals will complain, then gliders serve no purpose in the sim other than for those who know nothing about soaring to play act on a superficial level. I’m a sailplane pilot, and the allure of soaring is the challenge it presents, and the sense of achievement that comes from first (as a new pilot) being able to find thermals and use them to climb, to eventually (with more experience) being able to use those skills to fly cross country (and of course, use other forms of lift as well).
Implement thermals correctly or just pull the gliders from the sim. I knew soaring would be really tricky for them to do right, because jumping into something with engines and just letting the thrust drag you around is relatively easy and will seem pretty authentic if they just get it fairly close to real life, but soaring is filled with nuance and requires both precise atmospheric and aerodynamic simulation fidelity to get it right. Sailplanes don’t just plow through the atmosphere, but instead exploit the full complexity of atmospheric movements. It has to be right.
Also, the current aerodynamic modeling of the sailplanes is wonky. There’s little adverse yaw (really, how do you get that wrong in an aircraft with a very long wingspan that is well-known for needing lots of rudder in turns?), and they are ridiculously twitchy, with instant roll, pitch, and yaw responsiveness that is impossible. The gliders jump around like weightless hummingbirds, as if they have no inertia and the wingspan of a Pitts or something. Just wiggle the stick left and right and watch how ridiculously fast the glider responds. That is most definitely not how they react in real life. The fact that something as basic as adverse yaw is so far off makes me really doubt the accuracy of their aerodynamic model, because if it actually worked you would expect that it would automatically model adverse yaw correctly, and would naturally adjust for things like wingspan and aspect ratio.
Asobo has done a generally good job with the visual modeling and the general setup, but the atmospheric modeling and aerodynamic behavior of the aircraft are nowhere close to accurate.
You wrote word-for-word exactly what I (also RL glider pilot) also think about current “glider experience” in MSFS.
I think they fell “gliders are just easier planes” trap as probably most PPL pilots who never did glider crosscountry think.
But if you present them analogy planes=motorboats, sailplanes=yachts, then suddenly noone thinks that it is easier to master traveling by motorboat than by yacht.
Current thermal model also feels as if someone based it on some cursory information about updrafts in PPL books, that is why I filed a bug report detailing spatial incorrectness between thermals and Cu clouds - the most basic aspect of thermals in soaring.
If you have RL experience with any of the official gliders please file a bug report about adverse yaw, accelerated stall, spin or any other thing you can.
I’m pretty rusty on my real life glider experience - I haven’t flown gliders for around 20 years, but had over 120 hours in them, all in Australia.
In general what I have seen to date is that the thermals are too broad, which then ends up with them too sparsely populated.
I have many friends who are airplane pilots, and I’ve flown many different aircraft types, so not to knock powered aircraft pilots, but most pilots I know who have only flown powered aircraft are frankly not very well coordinated on the controls. They tend to use the rudder to track straight while on the ground and then almost completely forget it’s there once in the air. You can’t do that with a sailplane with a 15m, 17m, or 18m wingspan. You also can’t be successful at soaring if you’re always flying uncoordinated and therefore presenting the side of the fuselage to the slipstream, which increases drag and sink rate. Soaring requires excellent coordination and precise stick and rudder skills. The current state of the gliders in the sim, though, prevents that. With the barely functional yaw string and the weird aerodynamics, it’s hard to fly coordinated but strangely, it also doesn’t seem to matter much in the sim at the moment.
In many European countries, you cannot get your single engine rating unless you first get your glider rating. I think this is smart and something we should require here. There are far too many GA accidents due to the classic “impossible turn” when an engine fails while climbing out after takeoff. It shouldn’t happen, and wouldn’t happen nearly as often if pilots were first trained in sailplanes. Sailplanes perform very differently in such a situation, of course, but it’s more about the judgment that sailplane pilots develop. But I can see why it occurs so often because most power-only pilots get used to the engine dragging them around, and even through poorly-coordinated maneuvers, only to see the pilot panic when it unexpectedly stops running. All they have to do is first lower the nose to maintain airspeed, then assess whether they are high enough to turn back or (more likely) choose a landing site in front of them or to the side, and finally make sure that any turn they make is well-coordinated to reduce the potential for a spin. Instead, what often happens is they panic when the engine quits, either delay lowering the nose or worse raise it due to the reflex to avoid the ground, and instinctively try to get back to the runway even when too low to do so, skid the turn to get pointed back at the runway, and stall followed by a spin into the ground. Sailplane training and the keen appreciation that a pilot receives for managing the energy state of an aircraft and flying in the most aerodynamically efficient manner possible would prevent this outcome.
OK, stepping off my soapbox now. Sorry for the diversion.
Very true. This year I have a first rl occasion piloting Az50 Puchacz. After many years on flight sims, the only one thing surprised me -the role of the rudder and intense use of it while itialisation of turn.