Rolling my own simulator, asking for a list of common components!

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We actually used the first one you mentioned in that list. It was OK-ish but I think I can do better and this just seems like a fun project. I recently decided I dislike game development (funny, it was a sort of lifelong dream) and just love more problem oriented things such as cyber security and robotics... a simulator seemed like the best bridge between game dev and robotics!

I've got an engine or two already picked out for this already too.

Interesting! I wish you luck! But keep in mind that it is going to be hard, and consider contributing to the existing robot simulators (they are all open-source).

P.S. I am curious, can you write in a few points what were the difficulties you have encountered and how would you solve them?

Absolutely! The main problem for me has been intuitiveness and ease of use. The controls in Webots software... kinda suck. Being somewhat of a gamer and game developer I understand intuitive controls are paramount. Additionally assigning the scripts to a robot or object was not always easy and the built in editor was quite featureless. I preferred to use a lightweight IDE but Webots required a good chunk of screen space anyway. It was pretty easy to get lost in the scene especially when your camera flipped over and everything got backface culled.

@lukicdarkoo: for full transparency it may be good to mention your work on/with Webots with Cyberbotics?

Still looking for a list of components. Ie. physical hardware commonly used in robot building. Ie. brands/models/etc.

Can anyone supply that info?

There is no real answer to this, as there are so many components available, and I would say there is also no necessary (co)relation between what is used in physical robots and what gets used in simulations.

To give you an example: many mobile robots in simulation could include a Velodyne 3D lidar, as it's a good sensor to have, and avoids needing to add multiple others. However, those sensors are very expensive, so it's not necessarily very common to see them on real robots.

You might just see what Gazebo users (for instance) add to their robot models, or Webots users. That could give you some insight.