I know the feeling, when you dedicate so much time, effort and money to make something optimal and enjoyable for yourself and others - people reducing it to a wisecrack comment like that is frustrating.
Bobv5 did not seem to mean anything by it, but by god when you hear a comment enough times it becomes so tiresome.
I assume it simply seems like too much money to some people, but if you can defend it to yourself, you don't need to defend it to anyone else. I have wiped out on motorbikes, and I could not agree more about the comfort of being safe no matter what mistakes you make.
A few other benefits to virtual setups, you can let anyone try it without worrying about it you can jump into your sim any time you feel like it and not have to drive out to a racing track and do all the preparations etc.
I get the same when I tell people about my noise-proofed, floating wall/ceiling/floor in my home cinema, and how I
find it awesome that I can blast off the subwoofers etc without bothering my tenants. All the planning, work and money I put into etc.
They reduce it down to; That's a waste, why not just use headphones?
Or even, why not just buy a ticket at a real theatre like regular people?
The absolutely biggest difference between wrap around screens and something like the Rift is the deep motion parallax you get with a good wide fov HMD.
The question still remains how you will track the hmd without interference from the motion platform. In other words avoid the bumps and shakes to be translated into head movement. So far I can only think of trackir type of tracker that stays relative to the platform and tracks your head. In that area, your screen setup has the obvious edge.
Here is a demonstration of Leap Motion for anyone who has not seen it. If you look at that point cloud hand, you can see how well your hands can be tracked with existing technology.
Its even cheap!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYgsAMKLu7s