Thank you for your reply! I am very grateful that you took the time to look into this issue.
I did want to avoid a solution that never puts the headset to sleep, since I am using the HP Reverb G2, which, despite being 5 years old and being discontinued, is still the best headset available, so I don’t want to burn out the lenses keeping it on all the time.
I found a solution that seems to be working well for me. If I uncheck the WindowsMR setting to “Suspend Windows Mixed Reality and its apps when my headset is asleep”, then the headset is still able to go to sleep, but it doesn’t exit SteamVR, which is great. It does require a little trick to turn it back on, I have to press the windows key +Y twice, then wait a few seconds.
I was unaware of the vr.bExitVROnHMDRemoved option, thank you for pointing that out, I might try to test that later.
Thanks again and cheers!