Hello everyone,
I am currently developing a highly interactive dropshipping website that integrates a real-time 3D product visualization system built using Unreal Engine’s Pixel Streaming technology, and I am facing multiple programming-related issues that I suspect are connected to how Unreal Engine communicates with external web APIs and backend services. The core idea of my platform is to allow customers to interact with 3D product models (rotate, customize colors, preview packaging variations, etc.) before placing an order, and these product configurations must dynamically sync with my dropshipping backend, which is built using a RESTful API architecture. However, I am encountering persistent synchronization delays between Unreal Engine’s frontend rendering layer and my server-side product data endpoints, especially when fetching dynamic attributes such as stock levels, supplier-based pricing tiers, and regional shipping adjustments. Despite implementing async HTTP requests within Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprint nodes, the API responses sometimes arrive late or fail silently without clear error logs, resulting in mismatched pricing and outdated stock information being displayed to users.
Another major issue I am facing is related to session management and secure token authentication between Unreal Engine’s client session and my backend authentication server. Since this is a commercial dropshipping platform handling user accounts, order details, and payment redirects, I implemented JWT-based authentication that should validate users before allowing them to interact with supplier-specific data. However, during longer interactive sessions especially when users spend extended time customizing 3D product previews the authentication token sometimes expires without triggering a proper refresh flow inside the Unreal application. This leads to failed API calls when attempting to finalize cart configurations, and from the Unreal Engine side, the HTTP module does not consistently propagate meaningful error states back to the UI layer. I am unsure whether this is a threading issue, a problem with how Unreal handles persistent HTTP connections, or something related to Pixel Streaming session resets interfering with token storage in memory.
In addition, I am experiencing significant performance bottlenecks when dynamically loading product variations from my supplier database into Unreal Engine as runtime-generated assets. Each product can have multiple materials, textures, and optional accessory meshes depending on supplier configuration, and I am programmatically swapping these using dynamic material instances and data tables fetched from my backend. The issue is that when switching between product variations rapidly, memory usage spikes, and sometimes garbage collection does not free unused assets immediately, leading to frame drops and temporary freezing within the streamed session. Because this is integrated into a live eCommerce workflow, even small rendering hitches negatively impact user trust and conversion rates. I have attempted to manually manage asset references and call garbage collection functions at controlled intervals, but I am still seeing inconsistent behavior under high interaction loads. I am wondering if there are recommended architectural patterns within Unreal Engine for handling dynamic, API-driven asset loading in a commercial web-based environment like a dropshipping store.
Furthermore, I am encountering problems related to real-time price recalculation logic inside Unreal Engine. My dropshipping system relies on multiple pricing rules including supplier cost, dynamic exchange rates, profit margins, promotional discounts, and shipping zones. Instead of calculating everything purely server-side, I initially designed part of the logic to run inside Unreal for instant UI updates when customers adjust product configurations. However, floating-point precision differences between the Unreal C++ calculations and backend calculations (which run on a Node.js server) sometimes produce slightly different totals, especially when taxes and currency conversions are involved. This inconsistency becomes problematic when validating orders before redirecting to payment gateways, as the backend may reject the order due to price mismatch. I am trying to determine whether I should completely centralize price computation server-side and only display mirrored values in Unreal, or whether there is a recommended way to maintain calculation parity across both environments.