Among the most technically viable and economically feasible applications of virtual reality technology is the simulation of minimally invasive medical procedures such as Laparoscopic and Endoscopic surgery. From procedure planning to medical training, such virtual reality simulations have generated much interest from both the research and industrial communities. Although there is significant development activity in the area of virtual simulation of Laparoscopic and Endoscopic procedures, this work is often hindered when researchers find that no off-the-shelf tools satisfy the human interface requirements of virtual reality surgical simulations. The Virtual Laparoscopic lnterface™ is a new product from Immersion Corporation which provides an easy to integrate, off-the-shelf solution to the human interface requirements associated with simulating Laparoscopic and Endoscopic surgical procedures. Although only a single component of a full virtual simulation environment, this piece of hardware provides an affordable and easy to integrate solution to simulating and tracking the manual activities associated with minimally invasive medical procedures. Two commercial versions of the hardware are available. One is solely a human input device, tracking manipulations of real surgical tools mounted in a virtual patient. The hardware feeds tool position and tool orientation information to the host computer. The second is both an input and output device, tracking manipulations of the surgical tools while also providing realistic force feedback to the user through the tool handle.