No worries about the rating, as I think you are raising some valid concerns.
According to "Fast Car Physics" (eBook you can find on Amazon) finding the proper shift point actually changes per gear, and is based on calculating acceleration using formulas (too lengthy to include here) that consider mostly gear ratios and the HP/torque curves. Ultimately you want to shift up to a higher gear when the acceleration curve for the current gear overlaps the acceleration curve for the next gear up, which in some cases will be at or near the redline, but in other cases will be closer to the max HP. As a short-term solution I used a shift point near/at the max HP, then set warning slightly below that, and minimum near the max torque (max torque should always be lower than max HP, but some cars have torque and HP curves that are almost the same).
The STI they reference in the book has a first gear shift point of 7000 RPM, but a second gear shift point of 6470 (most other gears are around that 6450 mark). This is just an example and optimum shift points vary from car to car and the same cars shift points will change with different gearing. :-O
The author suggested that if you had to set a static/singular RPM for shifting that particular STI with stock gearing he'd choose 6500, which is the average best shift point.
All that being said, I agree that there are better RPM shift values than the defaults I provided, so you have the ability to tweak them (once per car for the time being) and then communicate back to me (via this forum or a PM) what you are using and why (and I would probably test them and update the INI to reflect those better values).
I'm assuming that if use the drag strip I should be able to graph acceleration vs RPM (both provided by the API) by running each car though each gears full RPM range and then plugging those overlapping acceleration values into the setting.INI file. There may even need to be a "learning mode" so you can also take a car to the drag strip and retrain the app when you've made setup adjustments. That work has yet to be done, though, so for now we are relying on the defaults, which are user adjustable.
Cheers,
Esotic