or use vertex color channel blending to blend 2 different tiling textures, its called vertex blending here is a tutorial on how to apply it in max: http://www.bakdesign.net/tm/tutorial/3dsmax_tutorial.html most engines these days support it
just get started, and don't act like a chicken. Use Google to get your answers like: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=3d+max+heightmap+tutorial+landscape+plane+displace+modifier+-shop+-buy+-dvd boot up your 3d application and get started
really only a 10 minute job. Fairly straight forward, but to go into describing how to do everything would take longer than actually doing it. Your best bet is to look for tutorials on the following. Deformation maps (black and white images, black being flight, and white being elevated, to extrude the geometry out) UV…