Interesting. I actually AutoX'ed my car yesterday, using different combinations of Sport, Sport+ with D and M/S modes and I've never once seen this shift light bar come up. Either I was never shifting close enough to the redline for it to come up or I wasn't paying enough attention to the HUD, watching the cones and all
I don't know why BMW had to reinvent the wheel here, the HUD tach with gear number indicator in the F80 M3 worked great, with excellent visibility and readability.