Zoomed-in snapshot of the gas density cross section in the xy (top row) and xz planes (at y=0, bottom row) after ∼2100 orbits for ϵ=0.05, 0.2, and 0.5 (from left to right) for q=1 with live orbital separation and using the spline softening method. The dashed black line illustrates the intersection between the orbital plane and the plane orthogonal to the orbital plane and parallel to the r_i−r_j vector.