Zoomed-in snapshot of the gas density cross section in the xy (top row) and xz planes (at y=0, bottom row) after ∼300 orbits for ϵ=0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.5 (from left to right) for q=1 with fixed orbital separation and using the spline softening method. The fourth snapshot corresponds to the low-resolution simulation run E02.S.f.q1.vlr. Solid black lines indicate equipotentials of the smoothed binary potential. The dashed black line marks the intersection between the orbital plane and the plane orthogonal to the orbital plane and parallel to the r_i−r_j vector.