LAS VEGAS—Donning a virtual reality headset is an attempt to escape the world around you, and it can be jarring when someone or something in that world requires your attention—perhaps a pizza delivery has arrived, or maybe your cat tries to rub against your leg while you're immersed in a game.

Enter the VR doorbell: some form of alert in the virtual world to let you know that something's going on in the real world to which you should probably pay attention. It's a concept that Redditors have repeatedly asked for, and now gaming peripherals maker SteelSeries appears to have heard them. The company showed off a prototype of its doorbell design at CES here on Tuesday, and it works surprisingly well.

Essentially, SteelSeries wants to use the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol to transmit signals from a motion detector to a receiver connected to the computer powering your VR headset, which would display or sound an alert in whatever game or app you're currently using.

During a brief demonstration at CES, an audible alert sounded when I entered the demo room, and again when I moved around within the room. A SteelSeries engineer boasted that such alerts are far less disruptive than someone tapping you on the shoulder when you're wearing a headset, and I wholeheartedly agree.

But before the Redditors get too excited, know this: the doorbell is still very much a prototype, complete with exposed silicon chips sticking out of it. While the motion detectors worked, they weren't actually connected to a headset during my demo, so the whole concept is far from market ready.

Still, there's a lot of promise here. Using Bluetooth LE means that the sensor can be attached to a wall in whatever room you've set up your VR headset for months before its battery needs to be replaced. An even more seamless solution, I thought, would involve integrating the motion sensors for the doorbell into the sensors you already have to install to enable room-scale tracking. The SteelSeries engineer agreed, but made no promises.