So in the interests of fair play (and because
@wietefras won't post this himself), here is a Dialux sim for eight 112cm strips. These are Crees (custom strips) at 48W each. Don't mind the PPFD readings – we're more interested in the light spread.
View attachment 4430936
The first thing you notice is the centre weighting of the light spread. The reason for this is the overlapping light in the middle vs the 80% reflected light from the walls (obviously set at 80% reflectivity in Dialux). The middle of the room gets the most overlapping light, the edges get the least.
And just to prove this isn't a set-up, here is another 4x4 with wall-to-wall boards showing the same light distribution (again, never mind the PPFD figures, look at the distribution curves).
View attachment 4430946
And here we have wall-to-wall strips (or as many as I could fit in Dialux – 28x).
View attachment 4430948
And here we have just a few strips.
View attachment 4430949
The moral of the story is, no matter how many strips or boards you put in a 4x4, the light footprint will always be weighted towards the centre of the light mass. Thus endeth the debate. And apologies for taking this thread off on a tangent.