thanks for your help, Egon.
I am using jdeveloper and installed what I beleived was teh 64bit version - this apparently included the 32bit JDK, however. Now I am traing to find out how one can force jdeveloper to use another, i.e. 64bit JDK (or at least configure the run options for a program to use a difference JVM from the one installed with jdeveloper)
The box demo runs in my current setup, however. I will try the jpcr beta over the weekend.
Update: now running in 64bit JVM. It works now, but very slow (much slower than the SW renderer), and also with shadows. I did System.setProperty("sun.java2d.d3d", "false"); as you suggested some time ago, but this did not have a visible effect.