Ha, this is a great reflection. In a different domain I had a similar experience - working for about 2 years on an unmanned vehicle design I thought was revolutionary, only for a colleage to review the design and point out that reverting to a traditional propulsion engine increases performance by a factor of 2. I felt like a balloon deflating; alas life goes on.

I suppose the lesson learned is avoid working in a vacuum of a project for long stretches and instead ask for a variety of consult from colleagues early and regularly.