I saw that it was now possible to run the OE performance steering wheel in the e46 a couple of weeks ago, as seen here:
http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=611535
The thing that held me back was that the while OLED display in the center really doesn't jibe with the e46 gauges/instruments. The gauges in the center are also a lot less useful for us, as our clusters already have useful gauges . At the end of the day, all I really wanted was the shift lights.
... which led to an offline conversation with Terraphantm about them, or, specifically getting the OE cluster shift lights to strobe at redline (allowing them to be more noticeable in peripheral vision-- which I don't find the default shift lights to be). Which, happily, he was able to do by writing a little program in the program space. He's still dialing in the pulse speed of the lights, and going to be making a thread with the details on how to do it, but in the short term, upgraded shift lights in the cluster:
Now that I'm running this in both M3's, I no longer have any desire for the shift lights on the steering wheel.