AbstractThis research work presents a surface-based virtual dental surgical simulator in which dentists can perform dental procedures using various cutters with realistic feelings of touch. Generating realistic smooth tactile feelings during drilling, grinding, or scrubbing is a critical issue in triangular sculpting simulators. Therefore, a stable haptic rendering algorithm is required to generate realistic touch feeling. In this simulator, the force feedback is realized using a spring damper force model and a force filter is proposed to make the force feedback smooth. Fast and efficient collision detection is used using vertex deformation technique for the sculpting process. In addition, the simulator is not designed for the one specific surface-based tooth model but rather the sculpting simulation can be carried out on any scanned model from a commercial 3D dental scanner.