The increasing cost of simulation software development and visual database generation is threatening to offset the dramatic cost reductions of image generation hardware. Sharing software and databases between simulator programs, through the use of a standardized graphics language, clearly reduces program cost and development time. This paper describes applying the PHIGS standardized graphics language to simulator database and software development. PHIGS (Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System) is a well-architected graphics language which provides a consistent framework for database creation, editing, and archival. Key features include database hierarchy, model instantiation, a rich set of primitives and attributes, powerful database editing, and standardized archival methods. PHIGS does not, however, support some important real-time simulator features such as level of detail, overload management, texturing, and mission functions. The Real-Time PHIGS (RTP) implementation described in this paper supports real-time simulator applications through several extensions to the PHIGS standard.