Resolved Frame timing render thread issue ECS + VR (openXR) on PC

Sorry I don't know what the exact issue is, and maybe ECS has nothing to do with it. But I am running out of ideas. (I tried the unity VR forum, in case its a VR related issue. But got no response. https://forum.unity.com/threads/steamvr-always-late-start-even-at-80hz-with-enough-cpu.1455055/)

I am on Unity 2022.3.0. using URP. with DX11 on windows 10.

When I have RenderDoc loaded in the Editor, the frametiming on the render thread performs better (this is how I interpret it). Why?

Any insight about the images below is appreciated. Some speciflic things I don't understand:
1. I don't know why these renderthread events are moved in the frame by renderDoc, or why it works better with it loaded in the editor.
2. I don't know where this "CustomRenderTexture.Update" comes from, I've tried toggling settings on the camera, BuildSettings and Universal Render pipeline Asset.
3. I don't know if the above points are even the cause of this issue.

Without loading RenderDoc in the editor, the frame is not pushed to SteamVR on time. And steamVR shows a "late start".


With RenderDoc loaded in editor. Some events are moved on the RenderThread and the "PopulateNextFrameDesc" now takes up the expected time. Resulting in correct frame timing for SteamVR.



In VR a stable framerate is very important, so there is a special Vsync that keeps the FPS at a stable value. In the profiler this shows up as the "FrameEvent.XRBeginFrame" so this is not a bottleneck. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/xrsdk-display.html

 

Switching to Dx12 or Vulkan 'solved' this issue.

Dx12 crashes windows at random intervals on my 5700xt, I am just going to assume this is a driver issue. So I will try to see if Vulkan is stable enough to develop with.
Since my issue is mainly a quality of life one I could still use Dx11, and just accept the 1 frame of extra latency.