I am sitting in the Natural History Museum and have just been lunged at by a giant swimming scorpion with glittering eyes. It’s so scary I instinctively duck and cower in my seat.

These are the final few seconds of First Life, an experiment in using virtual reality to tell the story of the natural world that is narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and being shown at the South Kensington museum’s educational studio named after the world-famous naturalist.

First Life recreates the startling sunlit Cambrian ocean of 540m years ago and the extraordinary early creatures which suddenly developed, based on fossils and knowledge from the museum’s acclaimed palaeontologist Dr Greg Edgecombe.

You take in the short film via a headset with a simple adjustable wheel to focus, plus earphones. Billed as an “immersive experience”, it reminds me of snorkelling off the Mediterranean coast. It’s far more involving than 3D. You are encouraged before it starts to look around as the story of a vanished world unfolds, from a basic feather-like creature called a charnia, through trilobites to arthropods, then animals with skeletons. Another huge nightmarish black predator brought to “life” is called amalacaris ... and then there is that 1.8 metre-long scorpion.

But the key breakthrough is that while each audience member has an individual screening, you are also part of a 60-strong crowd watching as a synchronised collective: before the screening starts you are asked to avoid reaching out to try to touch the animals.

“It is completely unique, because it has never been done before,” says Emily Smith, the museum’s head of audience development. “The feedback from people is that they have not seen anything like this before. It is something special, you can suddenly see an ancient environment.”

According to the museum’s director Michael Dixon: “This is the first time virtual reality storytelling has been used by any museum as a significant part of its programme.”

He adds that First Life is part of attempts to “redefine what it means to be a museum in the 21st century, to encourage people to engage with scientific issues, encourage the next generation to study science”.

The screenings are a test of the technology. If it passes muster, it could be harnessed in future exhibitions, to explore walking on Mars, say, or swimming at the Great Barrier Reef. Justin Morris, the museum’s director of public engagement, said it could even be a high-tech, miniaturised “planetarium of the 21st century”. The technology is delivered by partner Samsung, through its Gear VR Innovator headset, paired with the Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone.

The trial is the result of independent television producer Anthony Geffen’s pushing of technical boundaries at his London company, Atlantic Productions. A virtual reality unit called Alchemy within Atlantic created the software, overcoming the biggest challenge – synchronising the many smartphones so they deliver the experience to the audience simultaneously.

Geffen, a former BBC producer, has worked with Attenborough since 2009, wooing him with the lure of technical advances. He also produced the naturalist’s recent encounter with Barack Obama, to be repeated this month after attracting 2.5m viewers despite a late night Sunday slot.

The pair made First Life for BBC2 in 2010, which led directly to the museum version by using computer-generated modelling of trilobites and arthropod fossils. New 3D ventures with Sky followed, starting with Flying Monsters and leading to last year’s spectacular one-off Natural History Museum Alive (“extinct creatures come to life”), in which Attenborough conjured up dinosaurs. Geffen, described by Attenborough as “swashbuckling”, first started to explore virtual reality 17 years ago, when Atlantic sent a small team to Silicon Valley, but found the technology was far too bulky.

Then two years ago came the new generation of wearable virtual reality headgear (led by the high-end sets made by Oculus Rift, which was bought by Facebook last year) and the capability to link them to smartphones, which led to the current pilot.

Geffen says: “We always like to start in a world we can control, a computer-generated world. We decided to take a journey through a 500m-year-old ocean. We wanted to tell a proper narrative. It threw up all sorts of problems – where is your viewer looking? How are they reacting? We had launched ourselves on quite a complicated journey. We had blips along the way.”

The project started a year ago with computer gaming technology but then they switched track to make a film, with scary moments. Phil Harper, creative director of Alchemy, says: “There is a balance to be struck, but as film-makers we love those [scary] moments. With virtual reality, the sensation is of it all being [there], in front of you. We were experimenting with scale, so the animals get smaller, then bigger. It was very cool.”

There are drawbacks to it as an attraction, however, such as Samsung’s insistence that the headgear is used only by 13-year-olds upwards. It could also be seen as straying into “edutainment”, though the film includes more distinctly educational moments such as a tree of life depicting chronology.

Yet it is proving so successful, at £6.50 a ticket, that the museum is extending the run of 140 screenings, creating a potentially cost-efficent source of revenue for an institution that offers free entry.

Attenborough’s personal enthusiasm for the technology was clear at the show’s launch event. “VR has incredible potential. It takes you to places you could have never dreamed existed, and you have a vivid feeling of actually being there. It’s an experience you don’t forget - that’s what’s so exciting about it.”

“It adds a bit of magic,” says Smith. “But the important thing about this project is that it is a partnership. It is greater than the sum of its parts.” Six foreign museums have been in touch with Geffen since First Life started, and he predicts virtual reality screenings as a visitor attraction will spread far beyond this corner of Kensington. “Now that we’ve learned to use VR for storytelling, we are building experiences to enhance our major new productions,” says Geffen. “Soon you will be able to dive with a humpback whale, explore inside the real Great Pyramid, and travel through your own body.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Attenborough’s VR film First Life features ancient sea creatures such as opabinia. Photograph: Atlantic Productions/Alchemy VR