AbstractIn the recent years, more and more sophisticated models have been proposed for the gas distribution and kinematics in the Milky Way, taking into account the main bar, but also the possible nuclear bar, with the same or different pattern-speed. I review the success and problems encountered by the models, in particular in view of the new discovery of a symmetrical far-side counterpart of the 3 kpc arm. The inner part, dominated by the bar, and the outer parts, dominated by the spiral arms, can be observed from a virtual solar position, and the errors coming from kinematical distances are evaluated. The appearance of four arms could be due to a deprojection bias.