RECENTLY I was able to try out Valve’s “Vive” SteamVR headset, currently being touted as the gold standard of virtual reality (VR). I came away more confused rather than less about the viability of this cutting-edge tech.

The set is, with some glaring flaws, fantastic. Developers are still finding it difficult to render text properly and the imagery is still not up to high-resolution screen standards, but comparing it to the early builds of breakout headset Oculus Rift is like comparing spark to fire.

Steam has very cleverly partnered with the makers of Elite: Dangerous for their sit-down demonstration.

Elite was originally built, in the main, as an engine for flying spaceships through beautiful, accurately rendered star systems. Where it truly shines is simply as a means to experience the wonders of space. And it has been built from the ground up with VR in mind.

The effect on Vive is simply one of the most sublime pieces of theatre I have experienced in nearly three decades of gaming.

I’ve tried Oculus’s technology before, but the sense of screen was always there, just too low-resolution to be convincing.

It felt like an expensive toy, fun but not entirely convincing.

For the models of late 2015 it takes a second, switching from the ingrained sensation of eyes-forward to a flat screen, to realise the difference beyond say, an Imax experience. The black of space fills the screen, a menu floats in just about the right place.

As the game begins however, with my hands on the joystick and the throttle, I’m told to “look around the cockpit” by a disembodied rep for the firm. And suddenly it hits me. I’m inside a spaceship. I can turn my head until my view is blocked by the seat, then I can lean over and look over its shoulder into the corridor behind.

I can look over to my right and gauge the distance between me and the co-pilot seat on the other side of a suddenly spacious-seeming cockpit. I can look up and out at the glorious sunrise of a planet that has never existed. Look out, mind you, not at.

In front of me there’s a good 10 feet between my eyes and the screen apparently standing between me and space. It’s eerie. I could include a lot of italics in the paragraphs above about the eerie feeling of being inside a spaceship, because it’s that sort of experience, beyond the ordinary.

Wonderful little details have already been included in this version. Your arms and hands, when on the controls, correspond with virtual ones attached to the ship’s own controls. As you move the physical equipment, so do they. As a result, letting go of the controls feels like an out-of-body experience, real world hands having been severed from my regard.

And space, my God the feeling of twirling through the cosmos is one I’ve fantasised about since I was very small and now it’s actually possible to do, albeit with a few rough edges.

But a major question niggles. This is, for the moment, VR done up in its Sunday best, presented on a top-of-the-line PC with excellent headphones and expensive joystick, in a quiet, airconditioned room overseen by a rep from the company.

To replicate it from scratch you’d need maybe £3,000 for equipment — and your own quiet room. That’s the sitting experience — the standing one is going to be anyone’s guess.

To my mind this pitches VR as the latest expression of a major bottleneck when it comes to class and games technology, especially as the gap between the richest and the rest of us widens ever more quickly.

It has always been difficult to push expensive peripherals. Where there are not enough people on the uptake, the high learning curve and immense effort required to tailor games puts off developers.

And VR looks to be forbidding in price, with Oculus recently announcing their rig would cost more than $350 (£230).

This is a stumbling block which the burgeoning industry is really struggling with.

I’m a fan, I think, and much of what VR is trying to do appeals to the sci-fi nerd in me. Even so, for that sort of outlay to be justified it would have to become a significant part of my daily life.

But VR as it stands seems to take away more than it offers. With a screen and speakers in front of me I can be engaged while also aware of my environment — I can quickly talk to people where needed and notice if something’s wrong. In VR I’m cut off, vulnerable and anti-social.

This becomes worse when dealing with a major initial target for developers, techie young people with enough money to burn.

The habits of this leading-edge demographic, far from moving towards a focus on one thing at a time, has consistently trended towards a bewilderingly hyperactive level of multitasking.

Young gamers today frequently have several screens of information to pay attention to, from monitoring their phones’ social media feeds and messages, to watching the latest livestreams on one screen with the TV on in the background, to actually playing the games they enjoy on another.

In that context, VR seems a throwback to an earlier age. It’s a “phones down” moment in a world currently barrelling away from such sedate consideration.

But what if these barriers are overcome? I fear it will mark another shift towards a whole different kind of divergence of experience for the haves and have-nots. While some of us have no screens, and others cramped, slow offerings that merely let us play, others will be immersed in their waking dreams.