Just wanted to add some of my experiences here as well.

My car: 2010 A3 with DSG / 2.0T and quatro.

It took me a good month to learn how to drive this car and a 2nd month to learn how to really get the most out of it. In fact, I would say that while we've owned the car for about 9 months now, it was only after 6 months that I've completely adapted to the DSG transmission (both our other car and previous car that the A3 replaced were standard 5 speed manuals).

Now that I know how to use it and it's 100% intuitive, I really like the way it drives. It's definitely not as engaging as a manual transmission for sure, but it's certainly more driveable and being able to use it in Auto mode has its perks (traffic, hills, etc...). And - it's awesomely fast shifting when accelerating (and extremely easy to control and time shifts with).

I do have two things though that I really don't like about it:

The first is how gears are indicated (especially when over-riding D): I think the gear display should ALWAYS show you what gear you're in. Additionally, it should show you what mode you're in as well. Hence, D1-D6, S1-S6 and M1-M6. The reason for this is that it's easy to pick a wrong gear when in D mode. Additionally, you can do something stupid like over-ride D into manual mode and the display will show up as - say - M4. Then, let's say you get momentarily distracted, think you're in real Manual mode and you try and shift with the gear selector into a higher gear and unintentionally throw the car into Neutral.

My second pet peeve with the DSG is that it needs a physical lock on it to move it laterally form Manual mode back into Drive mode (no lock release should be needed to move it from D into Manual mode though!). You should be required to press a button - either the gear selector lock button or a different one would be fine. This is because it's really easy to pop the DSG selector out of Manual and back into drive (where it can shift on you!) if you're driving the car aggressively and have your hand on the gear selector (which is common because often you're rotating the steering wheel in a way where you can't get to the paddle shifters.

I think HPA's DSG remap might be worth looking into as it seems to mostly fix my first complaint and seems to address a few other niggling ones.

Those two issues are really the only ones I have with the DSG. Otherwise, it's a pretty cool transmission once you learn how to use it and love it

 

Are you not making things more complicated by adding d m s onto the dash readout.I don't havemine in sport mode too often but when I do its for a reason and its I'm driving on curvy roads and my hands are on the steering wheel so no worrys about hitting the shift lever plus I thought there was already a lock on the tranny so you can't pop it out if you do I think anything over 80 kph you run the risk of damaging the tranny.Any one fortunate enough to drive Hwy101 between gibsons and earls cove knows at the upper end of the drive you are too damn busy steering and shifting to really hit the shiftereven by accident

 

When driving in D mode you can always move the shifter over into manual mode. The instant you do this the display will show you what gear (say M4) you are in. Now move the shifter back to D mode. You are not selecting any gear (+ or-) just briefly visiting manual to see what gear you are in.

When driving in D mode, take your foot of the gas as you come to a stop sign. Move the shifter into manual mode. The display will show the gears descending M5, M4, etc. Come to a stop and wait for M1 to appear in the display. Hit the gas and move the shifter into D mode either immediately or when you want to shift into second gear. You never select a gear in manual mode, you are simply going into manual mode and then back into D mode. Why bother?

When in D mode the DSG will only slect first gear when 0 appears in the digital speedometer. However in manual mode the DSG will select first gear at 8 km/hr. Remember you don't select any gear (+ or-) just let the DSG choose first by itself.

 

I don't think it's making it too complicated to actually know what gear you're in. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who feels that way either because the HPA DSG upgrade apparently does the same thing, letting you know exactly which mode you're in and which gear your in (though you're not ever NOT going to know that you're in Sport mode).

My comments aren't for aggressive driving: when we're doing that, we always tend to know exactly what we're doing because we're paying attention. But that's not all the time that you're driving the car. I - personally - think it would be nice not to have the transmission dumbed down for the average person who's going to drive it in D 99% of the time.

The DSG is awesome in that it allows people to have both worlds: however, there are some compromises made on the manual side of things: you loose the "proprioceptive" ability to know "where" the gear shifter is - it would be nice to replace some of that by at least knowing what gear you're in all of the time...