The vr implementation IS basic but imo the experience is industry leading, nothing else comes close imo.
In my opinion it is worse than X:Rebirth VR, because handcrafted beats procedural any day. IDK what is so defining in Elite that you consider it to be industry leader. Maybe it's the fact that there's no industry to lead, space games died long ago and we just keep the zombies alive for our nostalgic entertainment. XR has better controls (especially on the Rift, sadly no knuckles support) stations look awesome and have lively backdrop of traffic around, handcraftedd backgrounds are amazing in VR. For me that's the defining spaceship experience in VR. Elite with its misleading 400 milliard systems is like NMS - you can basically visit a few systems and you know exactly what to expect around the corner, bar a few notable glitches. That's because procgen can only take you so far.
So, for me it's not a leading industry experience, and the arrival of SW:Sq will further drive it into the ground. Sure, you won't get the 400 milliard empty galaxy feeling, but for the average Joe who isn't into astronomy with hard physics data it's just fluff. Like for me the planet information etc. is just an impediment to find the service types a planetary base offers. It doesn't have any real meaning in game, except maybe planet gravity, which should be indicated on the HUD somewhere anyway... Elite's cool to show to VR newbies tho, but after initial awe of Exiting an Orbis station above the planet, it quickly wears thin.
Odyssey had a chance to change all that. They missed that chance because of greed (wasting time with coasters, dinos and zoos instead of riding the horizons hype releasing pdlcs). So we're back to "jam later", thing is after 5 years my patience has run out.
TL; DR IMHO Elite is not a leading VR industry experience anymore. It maybe was in 2016, we have come far further from that in VR. It's a bit thin still on a space games front, so it's easy to "lead" a party of two (XR and ED) and in my opinion XR is better.