Visualization is a very important part of a high fidelity surgical simulator. Due to modern computer graphics hardware, which offers more and more features and processing power, it is possible to extend the standard OpenGL rendering methods with advanced visualization techniques to achieve highly realistic rendering in real-time. For an easy and efficient use of these new capabilities, a stand-alone graphics engine has been implemented, which exploits these advanced rendering techniques and provides an interface in order to ensure the interoperability with a software framework for surgical simulators.