SANTA CLARA, Calif. — In the heart of Silicon Valley, you can slip on a virtual reality headset and fly through a photo-realistic three-dimensional building that will soon be the new corporate home for the chip maker Nvidia.

The building is still under construction, visible today as a large white frame with an undulating roof that is evocative of both an airplane wing and a circus tent. Scheduled to open in late 2017, the $380 million project will house 2,500 employees. A second building is also on the drawing board.

The virtual reality demonstration has been integral to Nvidia’s design and construction of the new building — it is powered by Nvidia products. Nvidia makes computing chips that were originally used to accelerate computer graphics in video games. Today, the chips are increasingly being used in engineering visualization and high-performance computing, including the architectural design of the company’s future headquarters.

This year, Nvidia also began offering a highly interactive rendering software technology intended to complement its graphical processors. Known as Iray, the software has made it possible to quickly alter everything in the company’s architectural design simulation, from the location, size and transparency of triangle-shaped skylights to material surfaces and colors.