thanks Hansmex,

I will look at my xorg install. Perhaps it is because I am using
nouveau drivers for nvidia.

The workaround is fine. I get sh3d wroking fine.

I would still like to know how to start sh3d differently
than using javaws so it downloads pieces from eteks.com

It is slowly downloading every time. I'd like to save the downloads
somewhere and not depend on the connection all the time.