1. not sure if your using s.object for rumble strips, but as far as i know u cant edit them much, certainly not the shape of the base object. You can of course use the wall tool, to create a strip then u make as much shape changes to it as you like, then simply apply the material from the s.object rumble strip or make your own using xpacker (but make sure to give the texture a rumble physics)
2. not sure what you mean, but you can give the road surface different textures in different sections by making creating crosss sections then applying a different texture onto it. or again using the wall tool mold a road patch.
3. not in rbr at the moment, brb or the makers of the rbx plugin dont support those things (hopfuly "yet"),, however you can do lighting tricks using alpha / luminescence / add & multiply textures. I will be doing a tutorial in the future on some lighting tricks for rbr.
4. you can merge tracks, or create road sections using the wall tool. However im not sure how you will adjust the race line or timing gates so its drivable as a "race" ... you can of course make your project then create a few versions of it using different routes.
5. lod settings are is basicly a setting to tell the game not to "draw" this object untill you reach a certain distance. Regarding the 2 lod settings, ive no idea why the "out" .. all ive ever had to use was in. er or the other way round.. i forget now
6. specular is how light is reflected.. a spec map is basicly a texture that will reflect light in a certain way combined with a normal texture. So for example a tarmac surface will have a "sheen" to it.. that is specular at work.. also if you combine bump maps with spec you can get better results.
7. As it happens ive just learn how to do that myself.. please follow this thread:
http://www.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/30556-changing-default-sky-rbr.html
Although this is a method for "skies" you can also map backround terrain onto it lowerdown.
8. animated objects and textures is a no go in rbr with current btb / rbx plugin support
tragic i know
EDIT.. the lighting effects and animation part is in context to rbr.. er.. didnt relise your using rfactor? i think there is shadow support and animation for rfactor, dunno
EDIT.. perhaps the lod "out" setting is for rear view mirrors.... ie so you can set the game to stop drawing something as soon as you pass it.. not sure
regards
pan