Cron - your experience validates my point - there is no substitute for real IMC training. But do we now have the tail wagging the dog? there is no real IMC training for PPLs, not because there is no need (quite the opposite) but because the machines used for training are not suitable for IMC work. The R22 may be cheap to run (300 similarly) but we are short changing our PPL pilots for the sake of 1 hour in an IFR aicraft in cloud (surely 5 hours in an R22 would pay for one hour in something IFR rated).
I am afraid that in my experience, no simulator can come close to the real experience of being in bumpy cloud (the fear factor is impossible to replicate) and there just ain't no substitute for doing it for real.