The invention provides a lighting system (1000) comprising (i) a plurality of light sources (10) configured to generate light source light (11), and (ii) optics (20) configured downstream of the light sources (10), wherein the lighting system (1000) further comprises a 2D array (110) of at least part of the total number of light sources (10), wherein nearest neighboring light sources (10) in the 2D array (110) have an average first shortest distance (dd1), wherein the lighting system (1000) is further configured to generate in an operation mode lighting system light (1001) comprising light source light (11) of a subset of the total number of light sources (10) wherein nearest neighboring light sources (10) configured to generate the light source light (11) for the lighting system light (1001) in the operation mode have an average second shortest distance (dd2), wherein the average second shortest distance (dd2) is larger than average first shortest distance (dd1).