I have to admit that the displacement setting are my personal nightmare. But if you use them correctly - well instead of making big words, just take a look at this fabulous picture from Jeff Patton. Great use of displacements. You can grab the file in the Ornatrix uploader section in case you don't allready have it and play with it. You can learn a lot from Jeff.
Marsel made a short explanation of the displacement channel in his tutorial, so i make here a simple copy and past, and provide you with some test pictures.
Here we go.
Displacement map offsets the position of final hair vertices by values -0.5 to 0.5. It takes the map value (in range 0-1), and subtracts 0.5 from it to gen the final value (-0.5-0.5).
Since 3dsmax doesn't provide a default RGB mixing mechanism, a special Ornatrix displacement map have been revised to enable you to control R,G, and B channels separately.
Check the displacement option and edit the multiplier to get the correct final displacement. For most hair displacement produces a messy realistic look, so it is an important feature.
A simple noise map, as seen under the hair is applyed in this picture to the "x-offset coordinates".
The gradient in the background has no function in this settings, but it looks nice (and to be honest i was to lazy redoing the renderings after i discovered that it was left in by mistake).
A simple noise map, as seen under the hair is applyed in this picture to the "y-offset coordinates".
