I've created a demo which I've posted to my blog using the web player. Unfortunately, I can't view it because all my machines are Linux 64bit, so I've also built an installer until the release of 1.9 which I'll upload shortly.

Check out the demo from here
The IDE runs quite well in WinXP under Virtual Box with Guest Additions installed, which activates accelerated OpenGL. I only had minor issues here, mainly with the preview window suddenly filling with garbage every few hours and the preview window not refreshing automatically, both of which I believe are related to Virtual Box, not Shiva. Restarting the Shiva IDE fixed the garbage problem.
Performance-wise, the IDE runs fast enough that only complex scenes are hindered by the virtualisation. Having said that, I can't wait for the Linux native 2.0.
I designed my models in Blender under Linux, which posed some well-documented and serious problems when it came time to transfer the models into Shiva in the Collada DAE format. I tried everything, excluding purchasing expensive commercial software and eventually, I found that the best way to work was to model in Blender 1.49, then open the .blend file in a beta of Blender 1.52 inside the WinXP virtual machine. From this, I was then able to export a DAE file which Shiva could read, though the models had to be modified specifically for Shiva to suit it's limitations.
I downloaded the beta from , and only the Windows binaries ones work properly when exporting Collada at the moment - it is a beta afterall. I found that if I exported a file and then tried to reimport it into Blender 1.52, then if it looked OK, it would also work in Shiva.
The model limitations included doing the following prior to export:
Simplifying the parts as much as possible
putting the parent object centre at the origin (0, 0, 0)
Applying effects such as subsurf, mirroring, etc.
Applying scale and rotation with Ctrl+A
I also did some tests using bones, and having created a simple model with an animation, I was able to get it into Shiva with the bones, textures and materials intact. I only looked at this briefly, but it seemed to only work if only one object was parented to an armature and both the object and the armature were placed at the origin.
Finally, once I had my demo compiled and transferred to my Linux desktop, it ran fine, except for the scroll wheel not working, which isn't a deal breaker for me. I also can't test the web player since I'm on 64bit Linux, so if anyone tries it out on another platform, let me know if it works!
PS. Yes, the lens flare was lifted from the sample, with some minor tweaks, like reducing the size of all the flare textures to 256x256.
PPS. I used the Shiva Joomla plugin for my blog.